What Skiing Taught Me About Managing Digital Risk: Be Prepared

It’s the time of year when leaves are changing colors and temperatures are dropping. It won’t be long before snow falls, and our family is out on the ski slopes. Skiing is one of the most enjoyable winter activities imaginable, but also one of the riskiest. That’s why we start gearing up early, well before the first snowfall—checking equipment, planning where to go and choosing lessons for the kids to improve their skills. Being prepared is all about making the skiing season both fun and safe. Given the choice between staying home and getting out there and enjoying ourselves, we’ll go with the latter every time. But we’ll also make sure we’re well informed and well prepared for the challenges that come with our skiing adventures.

The choice between playing it safe and seizing the moment is one that businesses face regularly in today’s digital world, where seizing the moment means embracing digital transformation. Through digital transformation, organizations gain the ability to provide more services online, enjoy a free flow of information with supply chain partners and collaborate nimbly with third parties—all of which will allow them to sharpen their competitive edge and take advantage of new opportunities. But to fully embrace digital transformation, they also have to be prepared to manage the risk it presents.

A critical source of digital risk is the explosion of online identities that comes with having so many connected devices. By embracing cloud environments and SaaS applications, the digitally connected environment creates a larger (Read more...)