Intelligent CIO APAC Issue 01 | Page 23

TRENDING IT IS CHALLENGED BUT WILL EMERGE STRONGER THAN EVER Jacqui Guichelaar, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Cisco, discusses the recent Cisco survey in which CIOs reveal their fears, strengths and strategies for coping with the pandemic. In my position as Cisco’s CIO, I often have the opportunity to connect with my peers across the industry. And that’s been a great source of strength in these very unpredictable times. I know at Cisco we’re already accustomed to remote working, and we have the network expertise to make it happen on a large scale. But to go from 20,000 to 140,000 remote workers in 10 days was something we had never dealt with, and it required a great deal of co-ordination and teaming across the company. We had teams working around the clock and doing whatever it took to make sure Cisco employees could quickly begin working from home. So, it was great to check in with other CIOs to gauge their stress levels and see where we could help. Many have done the same for me. That’s why I’m excited about the results from a new Cisco study which has been released, CIO Impact Report: COVID-19. For this study, we asked more than 300 global CIOs specifically on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted their leadership strategies, day-to-day stress levels and perspectives on current and future IT strategies. It’s no secret that this has been a difficult transition for CIOs, and the CIO Impact “ THE INCREASE IN STRESS FROM SECURITY ALONE ROSE BY 14% SINCE THE PANDEMIC BEGAN, AND HALF SAID THAT THEIR SECURITY FEARS WERE CONNECTED TO THE SHARP INCREASE IN REMOTE WORK. www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 23