Cybersecurity Top Priority Among IT Leaders, AI/Automation Not So Much

IT leaders cite cybersecurity as a top priority and an area in which their knowledge is most lacking, according to a new GDS Group survey.

On the other end of the spectrum, IoT and AI/automation are the least important topics for IT leaders heading into 2021.

UK-based GDS Group polled senior leaders at more than 300 global companies. GDS Group sought to understand the topics that business leaders are most concerned with as they enter 2021. It also gauged how knowledgeable they feel they are on these topics, and how they prefer to learn more.

IT leaders were asked to score from 1 to 10 how relevant or important hot topics are to their role. Cybersecurity achieved the highest score of 9, closely followed by cloud strategy (8.5) and digital transformation (8.4).

IoT and AI/automation, however, received the lowest scores, at 5 and 7.5 respectively.

Spencer Green is founder and chairman of GDS Group.

GDS Group’s Spencer Green

“Our surprise was the extent to which their importance score is so low, despite them being fairly well discussed and a fair way through the technology adoption curves already,” he said. “These are very hot topics, and I doubt they would disagree. We didn’t ask them to rate how hot they were, just how important they are. We will continue tracking this and anticipate they will move from being hot topics to important over time.”

It’s no surprise that cybersecurity is such a hot topic because “failure in this department can have enormous repercussions,” Green said.

Cybersecurity Gap

The survey asked IT leaders to rate their knowledge of various topics. The biggest gap between relevance/importance and knowledge level is in cybersecurity. It rated an importance score of 9 and knowledge score of 7.2.

Meantime, GDS Group asked 37 executives which topics are most important. In contrast to IT leaders, they rated AI/automation highly, with a high score of 8 out of 10, indicating a disconnect in priorities down the chain of command.

The survey shows business leaders have a real hunger for knowledge on most topics. They also are flexible with how they approach their learning. There is a small preference for face-to-face learning; however, many are at home learning from digital content, digital training courses, and virtual conferences and roundtables.

Methods of learning that require little time and money got the same scores as expensive and time-consuming ones.

“There is clearly a need for market education married with a willingness to learn, even for topics like cybersecurity,” Green said. “Furthermore, the research indicated that providers were held in higher esteem and higher product consideration by delegates when they initiated events like virtual round tables. They also indicated an appetite for follow-up meetings.”