IT resiliency orchestration can simplify disaster recovery management to reduce risk and improve efficiency in data security.

1. A.M. BEST'S MONTHLY INSURANCE MAGAZINE
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Gates Ouimette
With a clearly defined focus on “knowing your data,” GDPR
provides a new opportunity to look at integration across different
technology processes.
Technology
A Focus on Data
IT resiliency orchestration can simplify disaster recovery management to reduce
risk and improve efficiency in data security.
GATES OUIMETTE | SEPTEMBER 2018
Fifteen years ago, “Data Blockers” (Best's Review, February
2003) suggested that insurers lever technology investments
across functionally different business requirements and
“consider integrating in some aspect, your internal security,
privacy and compliance technology functions with your
business continuity policies, processes and procedures.”
Since then, cybersecurity and privacy have remained
intertwined and more topical than ever.
While movement toward IT integration continues, the
acceleration and magnitude of security incidents and privacy
breaches has made keeping up a challenge. IT's integration
had taken a back seat, at least until the General Data
Protection Regulation took effect May 25.
GDPR requires businesses to protect personal data and
privacy of EU citizens for transactions they make, anywhere
their transactions take place.
With a clearly defined focus on “knowing your data,” GDPR
provides a new opportunity to look at integration across
different technology processes within an insurance company
and inside its cyber product and service portfolio.
The growing need to know your data due to GDPR should be
considered within the context of data as the underpinning of
all of IT. This data-centric view would see data privacy and
compliance not as innovation inhibitors but as innovation
enablers. Since data is the most critical element in a
company's systems, whether public or private cloud, on-premises or mobile, the GDPR shot-in-the-arm focus on data
applies to other technology mandates benefiting from the world of #knowyourdata.
Cybersecurity and business continuity planning exist to protect data. The more that's known about the data, the better it can

2. be protected.
In the past, cybersecurity and business continuity planning functions were independent. In the emerging world of IT
Resilience Orchestration, software-enabled business continuity automation is expected to include cybersecurity mitigation,
as evidenced in the Gartner Group's ITRO market guides.
IT analyst Gartner's emphasis on aligning security and resiliency within ITRO further validates its role in policy, process and
procedure convergence. In effect, we increasingly will be able to equate and measure IT convergence by measuring the
ITRO market. That market, estimated at $373 million in 2017, projects 12% to 15% growth this year. As the concept of IT
resiliency expands, ITRO will drive further convergence.
The opportunity is enormous, given vendors expect a $700 billion IT downtime problem—the very problem ITRO is designed
to address. Ultimately, this problem is data-related, its security, privacy, availability and accessibility.
Driven by key objectives of recovery time and recovery point, IT resiliency solutions have matured from the goals of
consistently operational systems and networks to “always on and always available” data.
That IT process convergence has launched alliances between software vendors and the insurance industry, including the
“first dynamic measure of resilience to gauge risk,” part of a joint Redseal Digital and XL Catlin offering.
IT resiliency focused on data is continually more sophisticated, allowing companies to access the freshest, most accurate
data. Like IT's convergence of traditionally separate policies, processes and procedures, convergence of IT vendors will be
needed for ITRO to achieve its full potential within insurance businesses and their cyber portfolios.
Best’s Review columnist Gates Ouimette is founder and principal of ITconnecter. He can be reached at
gateso@itconnecter.com.
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