Security concerns keeping IT pros up at night

Security is still the main reason IT professionals are up at night, new reports from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT say.

BCS has asked 444 IT experts about their thoughts and fears revolving their company in 2016. The results, released in the 2016 Digital Leaders survey, show a mix of "predictable" and "thoughtful" ideas, as the BCS puts it.

Security is still the number one issue, though, with the Internet of Things (IoT) devices just adding to the existing cyber-risks.

"This is the fifth year that we have conducted the research helping us to build a picture that is showing that some issues remain key in the concerns of a digital leader. It also demonstrates the waxing and waning of terms that tend to populate Gartner’s hype cycle picture", says Adam Thilthorpe, BCS Director for Professionalism.

Besides security, IT experts also say widespread incorrect understanding of governance, the dearth of good engineers coming through the ranks, and losing development and delivery capability in the UK due to the lack of investment or belief, are some of the core problems they’re faced with today.

"What is clear is that year on year, we’re seeing that organizations feel they do not have the necessary skills in their organizations to help them face the IT trends that they know they need to address to help their organizations remain competitive", he added. "This continues to be a serious issue not just for individual organizations but also for the UK as a whole. The predicted skills gap is a very real thing and many, many organizations are experiencing it already"

In the next 12 months, information security (59 percent), cloud computing (48 percent) and mobile computing (34 percent), will be top priorities for many.

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