Boards prepare for digital infrastructure shocks, survey says
· CNA · JoinRead a summary of this article on FAST.
Get bite-sized news via a new
cards interface. Give it a try.
Click here to return to FAST Tap here to return to FAST
FAST
Sept 8 : Large companies and public bodies are increasingly scrutinising their dependence on critical digital infrastructure as geopolitical tensions, export controls and cyber threats expose vulnerabilities that were once largely taken for granted, a Capgemini survey published on Tuesday showed.
Responses from executives at 1,300 large organisations across 11 countries suggest digital infrastructure is increasingly being treated like energy and physical supply chains, requiring board oversight, contingency planning and investment.
"There used to be a sense of these risks. Now they have become concrete," said Nicolas Gaudilliere, the Capgemini executive who led the study.
Companies are allocating resources to identify critical risks, and some, including Airbus, have begun making changes to reduce dependencies on key technologies and providers, the report said.
CNA Games
Guess Word
Crack the word, one row at a time
Buzzword
Create words using the given letters
Mini Sudoku
Tiny puzzle, mighty brain teaser
Mini Crossword
Small grid, big challenge
Word Search
Spot as many words as you can
Show More
Show Less
Gaudilliere said recent events had made those dependencies impossible to ignore, pointing to attacks on data centres and telecommunications infrastructure during the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East as examples of risks that have become more visible.
Charles-Pierre Astolfi, chief information officer at France's National Institute of Geographic and Forest Information, said digital sovereignty was fundamentally about "substitutability" and the ability to replace critical technologies when needed.
Executives associated digital sovereignty with business-critical assets, from proprietary data and AI models to intellectual property.
Gaudilliere said the issue was not confined to Europe.
"It's not a geographical notion," he said. "We're not opposing countries."
The question, he said, is less who supplies a technology than whether organisations can switch providers if circumstances require it.
Nearly half of the organisations surveyed said replacing a critical provider would take between three months and a year, while more than a third said it would take longer than a year.
Rather than replacing technology providers wholesale, organisations are increasingly focused on ensuring they retain control of valuable data, AI models and other critical workloads that would be difficult to replace if access were disrupted.
Newsletter
Week in Review
Subscribe to our Chief Editor’s Week in Review
Our chief editor shares analysis and picks of the week's biggest news every Saturday.
Sign up for our newsletters
Get our pick of top stories and thought-provoking articles in your inbox
Get the CNA app
Stay updated with notifications for breaking news and our best stories
Get WhatsApp alerts
Join our channel for the top reads for the day on your preferred chat app