As though airline CIOs didn’t have enough to worry about dealing with the importance of information technology,  some people in the CIO job are now having to worry about IT systems  that spend their time flying from city to city. 

CIOs for the major  airlines have become aware that their company’s most expensive assets,  their airplanes, may be vulnerable to hacking attacks. As  airplanes have become more and more modern, the number of IT systems  that they contain has been increasing. The result of this is that each  airplane is almost as complex as a flying data center and it has as many  vulnerabilities. 

This means that CIOs need to take steps to find ways  to protect them.

As a CIO I suspect that you are well aware that there are a number of  different ways that your IT teams can go about developing software (and  doing a lot of other things). 

There is the classic method that has been  used for over 40 years called “waterfall”. Then there’s the new upstart  in town that everyone seems to be flocking to called “agile”. All of  these options can place a CIO in a difficult place. 

Which way is the  best way for our teams to create products?

Every person with the CIO job wants to have an IT department that is  quick and nimble. 

We want our staff to be able to anticipate what is  coming and make sure that the company is ready when it arrives. CIOs  also realize that in order to be able to do this, they need to make sure that their IT department is diverse.  

However, even though much has been said about the importance of having a  diverse and inclusive IT workforce, when it comes to promoting  ethnically and racially diverse people to senior leadership positions,  CIOs continue to struggle.

As the person with the CIO job we are responsible for staying on top of all of the cool new technologies that are rapidly developing because of the importance of information technology. 

Although our firm  may not use all of these technologies, they will be influenced by them  and so we have become aware of what the new technologies can be used to  accomplish. Two of the hottest new technologies that are currently being  developed are artificial intelligence (AI) and self-driving cars. 

These technologies are linked together and how  they evolve will have a big impact on the IT field going forward.

As the person with the CIO job, one of your many tasks is to find ways to make sure that the people that your company has hired choose to stick around.  

This can be a difficult thing to do: all of the computers in the world  can’t tell you what your company’s employees are thinking at any given  moment in time. CIOs need to find ways to use technology to determine if  the company’s employees are happy or not. 

Is this something that we can  do without violating everyone’s privacy?

As CIOs who understand the importance of information technology, we know  that we always have to be ready to deal with the next wave of  technology. 

The challenge that we have is trying to stay on top of  things so that we’ll be able to see new things before they overwhelm us.  One brand new technology that only now is starting to become a part of  everyday life is face scanning technology. 

Although this new technology may affect all the people who have the CIO job eventually, CIOs who work for sports ventures are going to be seeing it first.

Over the past few years there has been a revolution been going on in  retail. 

An industry that used to be based on people coming to their  bricks and mortar stores has been shifting more and more to doing  business online as the e-commerce market has exploded and retailers have  come to understand the importance of information technology. The  arrival of the Covid-19 virus and the resulting of shutting of most  retail stores caused the move to e-commerce to start to move even  faster. However, not all CIOs are currently involved in this process. 

In  fact, over at T.J. Maxx they are taking a different path.

Nobody ever said that being the person in the CIO position is an easy  job for anyone to have. 

However, lately it sure seems as though it is  becoming even more difficult. The bad guys have decided that instead of  breaking in and stealing our data, they now are breaking in and  configuring our systems in a way that we can no longer use them. They’ll  undo what they’ve done, but only if we agree to pay a ransom. 

What are CIOs to do now?

Perhaps more than any other executive in the company, CIOs have long known that having a diverse workforce is a good thing. 

Now research is starting to back them up. Diverse and  inclusive cultures are providing companies with a competitive edge over  their peers. 

This is the result of research analysts ranking of  corporate sectors based on how diverse and inclusive they are.

The person with the CIO job realizes that someday the Covid-19 pandemic  will release its grip on our lives and we will return to the workplace.  

The question is: Will there be an office to go back to when this is all  over? The changes the business world is considering offer a radical  rethinking of a place that is central to corporate life. There will  likely be fewer offices in the center of big cities, more hybrid  schedules that allow workers to stay home part of the week and more  elbow room as companies free up space for social distancing.  Smaller satellite offices could also pop up in less-expensive locations  as the workforce becomes less centralized. 

What do all of these changes  mean for a CIO?