4 things I wish CIOs knew in advance about wartime

In 2022, Accord Group, like most service companies, witnessed the initial shock and stiffness of customers at the beginning of the year, a revival of business activity starting in May, and a hype around solutions that could solve the most painful wartime issues.

Regret over what could not have been done in advance to make it easier to overcome the challenges became a key emotion of the year. And there was a lot that could have been done.

Let's take a look at what we did with our customers, the leaders in their industries, in 2022. What could have been done earlier and why it is likely to continue to be a priority for most CIOs in 2023.

1. Migrated to the cloud.

Obviously, if there is a risk of physical destruction of the IT infrastructure, migrating to the cloud is an acceptable way to maintain business continuity. Moving to the cloud, along with data center relocation, allows you to secure your data and ensure full access to it to perform operations regardless of the events taking place around. 

In total, in 2022, we implemented ten cloud migration projects for banks, retailers, and government agencies.

Throughout the first half of the year, we at Accord Group have been helping customers with migration and were pleased with the speed of movement of those who managed to build a ground infrastructure based on the principles of Software-Defined Networking (SDN). If only there were more of them …

However, as a CTO, I am concerned about the fact that even the most advanced companies do not check the “ground” for fault tolerance when moving to the cloud. The events of recent years require planning to rely on a pessimistic scenario, so I strongly advise you to do a stress test, turn off the “ground” and check the availability of applications under these conditions.

2. Increase productivity.

 In May, when we were finishing our fifth cloud project, it became clear that although the pandemic had hardened businesses in terms of remote work, the performance of our customers' systems was still not designed to support the work of employees forced to travel around the world. 

The exponential increase in the load on Internet-connected systems, when it takes six months to a year to deliver a firewall or VPN hub, has accelerated the use of software solutions instead of physical hardware. If only we had built systems of equal performance on the ground and in the cloud before the war to balance the load.

3. Ensured cybersecurity

As a result of the blurring of the perimeter due to remote work, the problem of endpoint security control has become more acute. It's clear that when cybercriminals are looking for the slightest gap in the security system to penetrate the network, and I have one employee working from a cafe near his home, another from a bomb shelter, and another somewhere on the road between Warsaw and Berlin, I need effective real-time analysis of endpoints and the most automated response to threats, such as blocking the host.

We saw a real boom in the demand for EDR solutions and complained that customers did not heed our recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even then it was clear that the presence of EDR / XDR is a necessary condition for ensuring cybersecurity.

4. Made backups of data and built backup Internet channels.

Since September 2022, we at Accord Group have had one common “headache”: Everyone wants Starlink! Everyone wants them, but they are not available!

Before the war, we gradually taught the market to make data backups, but only telecom operators and providers reached the point of reserving Internet channels. Unfortunately, maintaining the stability of communication, which was the responsibility of telecom players, in 2022 was distributed to their business subscribers and sometimes to individuals. If only we could have foreseen that such a commonplace benefit of civilization as the Internet could disappear.

2023

They say in 2023 only the state and the army will have money, and commercial entities will have to survive between serving the needs of these two segments and searching for new opportunities.

According to our observations, most companies are focusing their efforts on entering foreign markets. At least now we are helping a number of clients to open representative offices in Eastern Europe.

If this task is relevant to you, please note that Accord Group is present in Europe. We have all the necessary resources to ensure the rules of the game, quality of sales and prices (!) that you are used to in Ukraine in foreign markets.

Please contact us at info@accord-group.com.