After the Dixie wildfire , PG&E was quick to announce that it would bury 10,000 miles of power lines in areas where the winds were raging. Remember, after the Camp fire , the company first turned to a less expensive solution based on IoT technology and smart sensors that calculated the likelihood of high winds and then shutting off power wherever they thought they were threatening utilities. Clearly, that solution didn’t work.
I asked a former U.S. energy executive about this. He said, “It’s all about dollars: Burying power lines costs billions. And that investment is still hard to justify, even after the Camp Fire.” Unfortunately, the electric power industry is not the only industry where organizations are poor at assessing technology risks and failing to invest in the necessary supporting infrastructure.
A few years ago, after the Target hack, I asked the CIO how the el salvador mobile database had managed to breach it if there were ways to prevent the attack. He responded with exasperation: “CIOs and other IT leaders aren’t stupid. The fact is, it’s harder to justify cybersecurity investments to CEOs and boards than it is to justify marketing investments that will drive revenue.”
Cybersecurity isn’t the only infrastructure investment that CIOs have a hard time justifying. They’ve repeatedly told me that they struggle to find budget to address technical debt that’s limiting their business agility and ability to respond to digital disruption.