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THE IDEAL CIO IS A LEADER AS MUCH AS A TECHNOLOGIST , SO THE FIRST THING TO PRIORITISE IS PEOPLE .
Alain Sanchez , CISO and Senior Evangelist , Fortinet Europe , Middle East and Africa ( EMEA )
Evolving state of the CIO
Alain Sanchez , CISO and
Senior Evangelist , Fortinet Europe , Middle East and Africa ( EMEA ), discusses the changing role of the CIO in the Middle East , Digital Transformation initiatives and why ideal CIOs are leaders as much as technologists .
CIOs have been under exceptional pressure in 2020 due to the combined effects of on-going Digital Transformations and massive changes in the business processes and traffic flows resulting from an impressive number of employees working from home . They had to do a lot more with , at best , flat resources and budgets . Those of them that had never tested their contingency plans found themselves somewhere between firemen and emergency strategists .
As a result , they realised that they had to empower more people from their teams to deal with the day-to-day running of the information system so that they themselves could focus more on the strategic aspects of the roles such as technology innovation monitoring .
As many of them did not have this shift planned , they just could not spare enough time to look outside the box . That as it maybe , CIOs have to adopt a return on investment ( ROI ) attitude in order to prove more than ever the immediate business benefits of any investment . We saw a tremendous interest from executives for our methodology return on investment on security ( ROSI ) and many of them have extended the approach to networking investments , another proof point of the merger of security and networking that Fortinet calls security-driven networking .
The office of the CISO of Fortinet also has the mandate to help CIOs acquire this financial culture that enable them to fight with the right weapons when it comes to ask for more budget and resources .
Even though Digital Transformation and technological innovation are priority for many organisations in MEA CIOs are not spending a lot of time on this because 44 INTELLIGENTCIO www www . intelligentcio . . com. com