Fordham CIO Roundtable: Global CIO survey (May 19th, 2010)

Marianne Cooper from IBM presented the findings of IBM's Global CIO Study, based on interviews of more than 2500 CIOs across multiple countries and industries.

The study identified profiles of CIOs like "insightful visionary" and "able pragmatist". Leveraging data and analytics across all business areas is a great opportunity and the top priority for CIOs. Other priorities are (a) Virtualization and Cloud computing, (b) Risk management and compliance, (c) Mobility. Centralization and standardization is another trend.

A more general lesson for CIOs is to proactively reach out to the business to co-create and champion innovation. Maybe the greatest untapped opportunity for tech leaders is to show the business side what is possible.

Links

- IBM CIO Study site

Android failed security (or, why my grandma can hack it)

I have been using the Motorola Droid smartphone running Google's Android OS since last November. Overall, I am very satisfied with the phone and the quality of Verizon's network, but a security feature caught my attention last week.

The Droid (and likely other Android phones) has a screen-lock feature based on a grid of 9 nodes. When you set up the screen lock, it prompts you to draw a continuous pattern by dragging your finger over at least 4 adjacent nodes of the grid. After you verify your security pattern, you are supposed to have a locked screen: if someone finds your phone, they cannot use it because it is theoretically difficult to guess the correct pattern.

This sounds like a very smart locking feature for a touch-screen interface. The 9-node grid is certainly a non-boring way to authenticate the user. It is probably easier to remember a drawing pattern than remember a password. In addition, the computer-scientists at Google had fun calculating the combinatorics of the grid, the number of grid nodes and the minimum number of pattern-nodes needed to have adequate security etc.

The issue is that this security feature is an interesting idea in theory, but IT IS NOT WORKING IN REALITY for a very simple practical reason: when you drag your finger on the touch-screen to unlock the phone, and usually you do that often, then a trace is left on the screen that is CLEARLY VISIBLE, if you just turn the screen at an appropriate light-angle. Even when I clean the touch-screen very well and I clean my hands thoroughly, the trace is again clearly visible when I just unlock the phone a couple of times. Evidently, the problem gets much worse when the screen is not very clean, or the user's hands are oily or not thoroughly clean. Hacking a smartphone could not be easier...

Lesson for engineers: Graph theory and probabilities are not substitutes for good old common sense.

p.s. Techcrunch wrote in January 09 about another security bug.

On the democratization of Business Intelligence

What a great event! The IBM & Fordham event at the Graduate School of Business was full of insights for managers, students and academics interested in analytics. It highlighted the business value of analytics and the on-going business transformation enabled by Business Intelligence.

Some little bits of insight in random order:

- Business is not an intuition game anymore, everything is driven and enabled by data.

- When it comes to analytics, technology is often ahead of culture, rather than the other way around. So IT needs to "pull" the business.

- Smart users of analytics outperform their lesser-smart peers.

- Information should be constantly seen as strategic asset within business processes. Many executives understand accounting, financials etc. but they fail to "understand information".

- Building on the right architecture and digital platforms, analytics provide the highest benefit when real-time integrated data are combined with cross-boundary teams of experts, and when the organization constantly links activities with results.

- Analytics is a growth area for career opportunities, and students with the right mix of business and technical skills will be the next generation of business leaders. It was mentioned that IBM has at least 2,500 open job positions related to analytics.

- The increasing significance of analytics today is associated with explosion of data, the need to increase the performance of each and every decision, and the democratization of business intelligence - all organizations, independent of size and sector, have the opportunity to leverage advanced analytics capabilities and optimize their business performance.

- The main question arises: "now that we have the data, can we connect the dots?" (possibly the notorious financial crisis of 2008-09 suggests that even financial firms that are heavy users of IT are not there yet in terms of connecting the dots)

Check the press release by IBM.