High-performance IT is the pursuit of continuously improving business results through technology. But the concept of high-performance IT rests on a foundation of security, privacy, and resilience that is necessary to build trust. And this is where having a digital sovereignty strategy comes into play. Given the increasing geopolitical instability and cyberattacks plaguing companies and governments around the world, you should keep these digital sovereignty considerations in mind:
- Use different approaches in different jurisdictions to comply with privacy regulations. Privacy regulations differ by region and by country. Just as an example, despite the European Union having uniform privacy rules, last year, the Italian Data Protection Authority blocked ChatGPT over privacy concerns. With a high-performance IT approach, one size does not fit all. Your IT organization will have to abide by local privacy requirements, which may modify the way that your customers access and consume your products and services. This may also mean that you need to take extra steps to protect sensitive sovereign data, such as via network microsegmentation in certain cases.
- Assess the workloads that you need to protect to choose the correct security measures. If not all data needs the same level of protection and not every workload needs to run in a Fort Knox-like environment, some data and some workloads do need special measures. The case of a hacked confidential Webex call among high-rank German military officials published by Russian attackers is just the most recent cautionary tale. A high-performance IT organization leverages the right tools for the right workloads and, for example, encrypts information to protect data or restricts the usage of certain applications to mitigate risk.
- Develop strategies to mitigate a broader set of risks to increase your resiliency. Connected and distributed environments pose a challenge when building a resilient IT organization. Recently, damage to a submarine telecommunications cable in the Red Sea threatened the internet infrastructure. If there isn’t much that organizations can do about the issues caused by damage to cables under the Red Sea, they can keep other factors under control to mitigate risks. For instance, organizations can diversify sources of power supply, back data up to the public cloud, and run dual instances when necessary.
Want To Learn More?
Forrester clients can watch this on-demand webinar; check out our new report, High-Performance IT: Security, Privacy, And Resilience; read our stream of research on high-performance IT (see links below); and set up an inquiry or guidance session with me to learn more.
Related Links
High-Performance IT Continuously Improves Business Results Through Great Technology
High-Performance IT: The Tech Industry Must Rethink Strategy To Help CIOs Deliver
High-Performance IT Demands Superior And Relentless Alignment Between Business And IT
High-Performance IT Means One Size Doesn’t Fit All
High-Performance IT: How IT Running Style Impacts Business Value
High Performance IT: Security, Privacy, And Resilience
