For IT leaders, 2018 is going to be a year like never before. Business wants digital innovation to be out of the sandbox and scaled for the enterprise. It’s becoming an imperative to deliver continuous digital experiences to demanding customers. Besides, there’s an expectation to be ready to support the Device Mesh, Advanced Machine Learning, and Autonomous Agents, to name a few. How are CIOs prioritizing and gearing up?

Contributor

• • Sangy Vatsa, Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President, Comerica Bank

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Transcript 

Sanjog Aul [00:00:30]:

Hello, and welcome to this segment of CTN. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. And our topic for today is the CIO Agenda 2018. And our guest for today’s show is Sangy Vatsa, who is the Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President with Comerica Bank. Sangy, how are you?

Sangy Vatsa [00:00:49]:

Yes, Sangy. How are you doing? And very nice to speak with you again.

Sanjog Aul [00:00:54]:

Thank you so much. And I think nothing better than starting the year with a discussion with a leader like yourself who has been, I’m sure, fighting the battles and winning many of them and in the past few years. And as the 2018 year starts, we’d love to understand what is in store for you, for your business and then for the CIO community in general. So that said, one of the things which does come to mind is the 2017 year was so full of innovation that was done and something which was so unprecedented. You talk about machine learning, you talk about the device mesh, you talk about autonomous agents, and these are just a few, but of course, not everybody is going to use it. But there are many other disruptions that were done in digital, which was supposed to be earlier in the labs and then it was more like just proof of concepts. Now people are saying, okay, let’s integrate it. Let’s make it real. With all of that, that is going on there, right? And digital is going to be at least we expect it to be reality and integrated. Where are CIOs with it? And how are they planning in 2018 to gear up for us?

Sangy Vatsa [00:02:18]:

Yes. And I think this is a topic, as you said, very actively being discussed, also top of mind for a lot of people, not just technologists, but overall business leaders. And I’d like to start maybe with a point of view, Sanjog Aul, is that we actually have been focused on the why and the so what. And once those are clearly understood across the bank, other transformational things follow. So whether they are in the more traditional digital space, such as the cloud and the mobile or they are more in the emerging digital space, such as the advanced analytics, machine learning or things like cryptocurrency. So I’ve always felt that with that kind of a broader mindset, every leader in IT can be seen as a business leader. And I’ve always felt that the CIOs first need to ground themselves in the business and the major business priorities. And once that’s in place, I think all these technologies that you talked about, I mean, they are absolutely becoming real. They are being used by various businesses across different industries. What we’ve done is in order to really enable the business priorities of a bank that are primarily tied to growth, efficiency, customer loyalty and the regulatory compliance. Our technology organization of the bank has established this new guiding principle, and that principle is what I’m using day in, day out to make my decisions. And I think as we go further into this call, I’ll expand on that guiding principle and our tech strategy. But to answer your question in more of a kind of a summary way is these things are real. They are actually becoming very pervasive in our fabric as part of the broader industry. And more exciting things are in store in the coming 12 to 24 months.

Sanjog Aul [00:04:30]:

So given always, CIOs are supposed to, on one hand, look at the cost control because, of course, as you’re going to grow, you’re going to change. There would be new things tried and there would be new elements that will be brought as part of the puzzle. And that could shake up what you originally did to bring something to a stable state, which was running the leanest. So of course, cost control would be one of the areas where you would focus. And then in order to go digital, just that is just one example, you would have to rethink your processes. So process improvement will also be at least one of the activity that you’ll be or your group or your business will be busy with. What else which is not as obvious that is on your plate, which is either misunderstood or undermined. But otherwise, it’s important for you to create the real, tangible, meaningful business value as the IT group that you heed you’re heading.

Sangy Vatsa [00:05:38]:

Yes. And as you very well said, there are certain aspects of technology that have to work consistently well. These are the things I would call them as foundational aspects of delivery and things tied to, as you said, cost management, ongoing process improvement, systems availability, your foundational aspects of cybersecurity, those need to really work day in, day out. And when they work, you have the opportunity to really focus on other emerging aspects. So I would say we’ve been focused on those fundamental aspects of what’s important for us for our business in 2017. We’ll continue with that kind of a mindset for 2018 and beyond. At the same time, I think focusing on driving new business growth opportunities, a more strong and proactive approach to driving information security and then regulatory compliance level of mindset should stay top of mind. This may be a good time for me to briefly mention our guiding principle I mentioned just a couple of minutes ago. So our guiding principle that we have laid out for the bank, part of the technology charter of the bank, is to deliver customer centric products and services with speed and agility and with embedded security and compliance at an optimal cost by empowering our talent. And so if I was to unpack this, there are three kind of major stakeholders that are captured in this guiding principle. You have customers on one side, the customer centricity. You have the employees on the other extreme with respect to empowering a talent. And right in the middle, you have your shareholders and when you look at cost optimization, security and compliance. So what we’ve basically done is this guiding principle has in addition to supporting the three stakeholders, it has five kind of core elements. It has customer centricity, speed and agility, embedded security and compliance, number four, optimal cost and number five, talent, empowerment and partnerships. So we believe by focusing on this broader charter of the organization that goes beyond the important aspects of cost optimization and process optimization is what the priorities should be based on. And as a result, it makes it a lot more encompassing of the broader enablement that you want to drive for your business. And then the other thing I would mention is that what you measure is what you treasure. And so if you don’t have the right metrics in place, what we’ve done is, in order to ensure that we are measuring our progress and our success, for each of these five elements that I talked about, we have 2 metrics each. So what I refer to basically, top 10 metrics to manage the IT for the bank. And those things, I personally pay a lot of attention to on how we are, again, progressing and driving our success?

Sanjog Aul [00:09:05]:

So given all the different things that we spoke about like process improvement, cost control and then you spoke about security, those were also there even in 2016 and 2017. The things which at least on the business and technology change front is the acceptance of new ways to look at like basically artificial intelligence or machine to machine communication and even people are talking at the process level to fundamentally rethink because now you want to replace humans with bots. So would you think that is just peripheral versus it’s something which is it is the right time for us to have 2018 become that year where you will take concrete steps towards exploring them and if possible them? Or these are good in a museum?

Sangy Vatsa [00:10:03]:

Yes. No, I do believe these capabilities in artificial intelligence, robotics and machine learning, while they are not new, with the advancement of the user friendly digital agenda and the maturity of open source technologies, these capabilities have become a lot more accessible to businesses. Furthermore, there are many training opportunities in these areas, both for the emerging workforce being educated in colleges or existing workforce that is in the industry being trained on these technologies. We, in particular, are applying these capabilities across our business units. And I do see them further growing and being adopted across industries in the next 12 to 24 months. So if I take some specific examples, if you think of a technology like RPA, robotics process automation, it’s something that is very real. We have put it to use across multiple business units, and even the early results are very positive. And what it’s helping us do is to free up some of our human resources to focus on things that they, in the past, did not have the cycles to focus on. And in some cases, it’s really helping drive customer delight through a better customer service because our colleagues are available to provide that extra level of customer service support. In other cases, it’s removing inefficiencies from the system by bringing some of these automation oriented capabilities into the environment. If I take a look at machine learning and AI, in many aspects of our business, there are some very timely opportunities, and we are actually applying it in some areas already. These algorithms that we use to really have the system learn from the interaction between the customers and the business, those algorithms are now becoming very easy to implement, as I mentioned, with the availability of some of the open source technologies. So in short, these things are not just hype. However, with anything new that comes into the environment, you’ve got to be well aware of what are the possible outcomes. And sometimes, some unexpected outcomes can actually happen as well, and that may not be in the best interest of your business. So having some clear set of prescriptions on how best to use these technologies and being very clear about the fix for purpose of these technologies that help businesses to use them the right way, get the most out of them and without having a good strategy on how to use them could cause other challenges as well.

Sanjog Aul [00:13:08]:

So I’ll take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back. And thank you. I would like to explore what besides the fact that, okay, these new technologies come and you’ve been around the block long enough that you’ve seen some new technologies come, you adopt them or you play with them and some actually get adopted, others are put to the side. Is this era of looking at data differently, looking at people differently and be able to get into people’s mind far better and far more effectively than we could ever do that is our customers. Is that changing your role or what you’re going to put on your plate? Or is it just your three or four compartments like any leader had? It’s okay, I have to handle talent, I have to handle this new technology, I have to work well with the business and I have to lead with the vision. I came up with four areas.

But is there anything that you think there is a material difference? And any leader or the people who report to you, their lives are going to change as a result of these totally different way of tackling the life and business. Well, just think of it. Take a minute. We’ll be back, listeners, and let’s explore.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:42]:

Welcome back. So, Sangy, you and I could have had this conversation, I think, in the last decade, multiple times, and new technologies would have come. You would have handled people your people would be looking forward to or excited and nervous about something new that’s coming. And somehow when you look back, you would have tackled it. Is this another hiccup or is this another spike? Is this another excitement? Or would you say some of these things which you never thought would even happen in terms of technological advancements or how they could be utilized and how the world is thinking it will be utilized. Is that changing your life as a leader and the people who report to you?

Sangy Vatsa [00:17:31]:

Yes. And Sanjog, this is one of the things, oftentimes, we all sit and think about we look at what’s happened through the rearview. We look at where we are and then we try to see through the windshield where we’re headed. Anytime you look at the S curve where things start to really move up more exponentially, I believe that the last many years of work that has been groundwork that has been done where things have been becoming more mature, use cases are being experimented with in the labs. The things are starting to get to the point where the stage is being set up for things to grow maybe at a more exponential rate. And what I kind of mean by that is the technology is definitely disrupting our environment. And so we need to basically continue to change. But what’s different, right? What’s different and what’s kind of different from my perspective is, first of all, it’s not just technology. And our workforce, when I look at, is also changing rapidly. More than 30% of our workforce are now made of digital natives. These are the people who were born after 1980. Roughly 2/3 of them, I would see them as Gen Xers or millennials. Their expectations as well as many of ours are now being set by the very best online businesses. It’s just no longer banking competitors that we need to worry about. We need to keep pace with the likes of Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google. And so when I think of the customers are using these capabilities that day in, day out, they are being exposed to these digital experiences and beyond, we no longer can just continue to wait for business requirements to be created and then try to come back with some solutions. So what’s kind of the approach to that? Sanjog, my kind of perspective is to stay very, very well informed, be really open to driving change in a very inclusive way. So one of the aspects I kind of share with the team is this crowdsourcing mindset. You’re no longer limited by the resource pool of your technology team. You have business partners who are coming very savvy with some of these learnings. Schools are now teaching all these aspects of digital orientation. And so in order to really be effective in your job and to have your leadership team be fully embracing this mindset is to be as inclusive, leverage crowdsourcing, create crowdsourcing kind of communities inside your own companies. And these communities of practice are then basically unleashed to really think of art of the possible. And what you’re now able to do is create a multiplier effect and not be constrained by, again, those five, six, seven resources that you would be relying on in the past when you introduced a new technology. So and in summary, I would say it’s not about technology, it’s about the change and how do you really tap into a broader resource pool to really bring some of these changes to fruition in your work environment. And then the other piece I would like to highlight is this whole mindset of in the last few years, we’ve talked about agile delivery, think more in terms of minimally viable products. Don’t look for this big bang change to come into your environment and then wait for it to be ready to declare success. Instead, think of many small minimally viable products oriented changes coming into your environment. And if you don’t do well with one or two of them, fast, fail, learn fast and move on. And so that’s my kind of perspective is to learn, adapt, experiment and the ones that look promising, get fully behind those and drive them forward. So I’m not sure if you kind of answered what you were looking for on what do I see becoming more different as we move forward.

Sanjog Aul [00:22:04]:

No. So I definitely see that you are trying to like you used the term digital natives and it seems like it is a design of your organization which has to change because, of course, you cannot force a regular technology individual or even a business person who is supposed to help deliver on these promises by retrofitting something and feeling, oh, yes, this is a slap on. So you brought some digital natives. So then that’s like part of the puzzle because they are going to bring that breath of fresh air and they would have lesser experience. They will have literally no business knowledge or they may have some. But you also have people who currently exist. So your change management that you’re trying to do here will require people who are motivated and who are equipped and who have been offered the training. And many people may not have signed up for this crazy maddening space of change. So if in 2018, you have to get everyone on board and further streamline, are you going to pull out a magic bullet to get everyone to think in the same way so that when you try to align whatever strategies you have created to the execution? Or actually aligning execution to the strategy, then you’ve got the people who actually have to do the job are there, motivated and equipped.

Sangy Vatsa [00:23:40]:

Yes. And Sanjog, if anybody is selling that magic bullet, I’ll buy it. I don’t believe there is one out there, and I could be wrong. But I’ll maybe highlight by saying that there’s a session I had conducted on this topic that I think it’s titled Managing the Digital Talent Life Cycle. It was one of the sessions that you had hosted. And I shared my kind of broader thoughts on what do I see as the importance of really cultivating in this digital talent landscape. And one of the things I shared at that time, if I recall, was that the change is and change management, it requires a broader level of your workforce to come along the journey. And it’s very, very important that you’re looking at every segment of your talent pool to fully offer them the opportunities and equip them with the right tools and resources that they would need to be successful and things that they’re motivated about. We have put together an effort. We call it Comtech. It’s the College of Technology and Innovation in the bank. And with Comtech, we are actually rolling out these learning segments that will be not only available to the technology colleagues, but it’s actually available to all colleagues at the bank level. And maybe on a future session, I can share some more insights on what we are doing with this Comtech program. But what it is really designed to do and parts of it are being kind of rolled out in next weeks and months is to really create a foundational understanding of the digital capabilities across the bank, across all business units of the bank. And then there are deeper modules, as you would think of, maybe a 200 or a 300 level course, that is then geared more towards the technology context. So what we are basically looking to do is, number one, create a broader level of learning agenda, an agenda that is grounded in constant and continuous experimentation, ensuring that we are creating these pairs of digital natives along with the more tenured, seasoned colleagues. And they can actually have a ongoing level of sharing of information. No one can bring a deeper domain knowledge to the table. The other brings basically the insights and learnings that they have gained from an emerging technology landscape. And that pair then actually becomes a very, very powerful construct to bring the best and then drive a shared learning and outcomes going forward. So those are some of the tactics that we are applying to ensure that this continuous inflow of learning within our talent pool is becoming part of our ongoing approach.

Sanjog Aul [00:27:01]:

And we’ve also always discussed about the different initiatives you’ll start. At one end, you have lot of things to be experimented with for you to know what works for you. On other hand, you have to handle the stakeholders’ expectations that doing these experiments to know what’s the sweet spot. And the third, you have to make sure that the energy and enthusiasm and the culture that, yes, we want to move forward, we want to change, has to be almost uniform. You have to make it uniform across the organization for you to move this big ship forward. And when you were just doing the POCs, that’s one thing. But in 2018, at least what I hear from talking to many people, is that, honeymoon, if you will, as I mentioned in the beginning, is over. They are saying, I this is digital now. I mean, we cannot move forward. So who’s going to push this agenda? So while I say CIO agenda, but your agenda could not remain your agenda. It has to be a business agenda where they ought to drive it. But is that if that’s not happening, so are you taking or are you thinking of taking control of the situation and nudging and pushing and shepherding your business counterparts to make sure that you are able to say, help me help you? Is that how you’re thinking in 2018?

Sangy Vatsa [00:28:38]:

Yes. That’s a great I think there are a lot of insights in that question as well that you asked, and Sanjog Aul, is and I’ll take a specific example. We have constructed and had certain sessions that I would call where we brought the CIO, the Head of Retail Business, the Head of Treasury Business, the Head of Wealth Management Business, our Chief Marketing Officer. And we’ve had sessions where five of us have talked about that as we think about the future of the bank, as you think about what are the must dos that we should really do with high quality and with the level of quality as I said, the quality to sustain? And what are the bold moves that we need to undertake in order to really transform our capabilities to keep them very customer centric so we can drive higher customer loyalty. And so first thing I would say is it’s not about technology at all. In fact, it’s all about the business growth. It’s about business transformation. And technology becomes a very critical enabler. But if we don’t spend the time to really understand the so what of the business opportunities, then we would absolutely miss the mark. And the other piece I would say is that when you think about the other aspect of where we have so much invested in technologies from last 20 years And many of these things have gone through those cycles of excitement and is there a hype and then they become real, things like service oriented architecture many years ago, right? There was a huge excitement about it. People thought it was a brand new thing. Will it sustain or not? And over the course of time, it became part of our fabric. So that’s the other piece that we are also very focused on is how do you leverage your legacy assets that you have invested in. And by using tactics like application programming interfaces or APIs or microservices, where we are actually opening up many of our legacy systems for our channels so we can actually digitally enable the channels that are used for us to service our customers. So I would say, number one, it’s all inclusive. Bring all stakeholders to the table and make it a unified technology driven business transformation and have shared agenda. And number two, really continue to leverage the investments you already made in the past. So everything doesn’t need to be a greenfield approach. Those are great when you have those approaches, but that should not hold you back to transform your business. If those opportunities don’t present themselves, then think creatively about what could you do with things like APIs.

Sanjog Aul [00:31:42]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. And, Sangy, when we come back, let’s challenge the notion that there can be an IT strategy or there should be an IT strategy to deliver IT in today’s day and age where the fundamentals of what a core IT strategy was dependent on is being challenged on a regular basis. So what would a strategy or a vision look like for a CIO, especially when the type of things that are coming your way? You did not grow up or got your experience in those fields at all. So talk about qualification of a CIO today before they can say, yes, I will build an IT strategy which will have a last power and which will be inclusive of all this new disruption that are coming our way.

Sanjog Aul [00:34:51]:

IT traditionally was moving at a regular pace. It was growing. It was morphing. And the technology leaders who grew up with it, I’d say they had they had earned their stripes to be able to handle those changes and that’s why they could build a strategy and be able to lead the people within their group as well as business confidently. In 2017 and 2016 or maybe 2015, those last three years have brought forward a lot of new, brand new ways of looking at how we live our lives and do business and related technologies and paradigm shifts. The CIOs who may be at the top today may not or in I can claim that not most of them may not do not have that background for them to fundamentally drop what they’ve learned and build a very cohesive and powerful and actionable strategy. Am I correct in this assumption? And if I am, then 2018 almost requires the CIOs to go back to school for them to be relevant or stay relevant for the business.

Sangy Vatsa [00:36:17]:

Yes. And this is an area when I think about and I’ll just start with just my own example. Many of the things that I am maybe stating now or able to articulate about the importance of the so what, understanding the business purpose, the whys, what’s the marketing strategy, what are some of the roadmaps that are important to your business partners. I mean, these things didn’t come easy for me personally as well, being trained in a traditional technology kind of a landscape. I think what worked out well for me and fortunately for me, having some really strong mentors along the journey, having some real learning opportunities along the journey, I would say it was almost after 15 years being in the IT industry and enjoying what I was doing, I felt that in order to really understand some of the other significant aspects of the business, I had to continue to educate myself. And I went back to the business school. And in addition to having the technology education, got myself really immersed into the MBA program that I undertook. And it really kind of opened up my eyes to what are the importances of some of these other aspects of the business that I really did not even pay much attention to, to begin with. If I fast forward the kind of the outcome of that program, there were things that I really enjoyed. I did not realize until I got into those things, whether it was business strategy work, work in regards to marketing. In fact, some of the courses I did very, very well were the courses I would have not taken originally because I thought that wasn’t part of the technology charter. So I would say having that openness to challenge yourself and take calculated risks and then come back on the other side and say, you know what, had I not tried this, I would have never benefited from this level of learning. If I think about being comfortable now at the level because of that hard level of learning and, as I said, didn’t come easy, our Chief Marketing Officer is now able to come to a technology town hall and give an update on the technology strategy because of the partnerships we’re building. And I have actually given an update on our marketing strategy in a joint town hall. So to me, I think it’s one of those things that if we don’t really challenge ourselves and continue to learn, this will become a bigger challenge for the leaders to solve down the road. And I think the other point I would make is surrounding yourself with people with levels of strength is very, very important too. Even with the best of the training, learning, there are no I mean, I shouldn’t say there are no superheroes. There are probably some superheroes out there. I also feel that I’m, for sure, not a superhero, and there are maybe superheroes out there. But I like to surround myself with leaders who bring diverse perspectives, different levels of strengths to the table. And as a result, while we can continue to learn and grow, we also bring others to the table who, as part of the team then, can make us collectively much stronger. 

Sanjog Aul [00:39:59]:

And what you just mentioned is something which, of course, every CIO must be doing. What do you do about those pockets where you don’t know much, other people who are following you don’t know much about the subject matter, and any partners or consulting firms, you name it, everyone is a wannabe. They don’t know much. If you had to highlight and of course the business says, you know what, I want to harness the value of this innovation. I want to do something with it. So as part of your 2018 agenda, what would you do to build that new muscle where there is no trainer, there is no whey protein or anything else which will help you build that?

Sangy Vatsa [00:40:46]:

Yes. One specific effort we have undertaken, I call it, Connected Labs. This is where we are with universities and with our other technology suppliers. We are actually getting the labs connected where we will pose a use case, a kind of a business opportunity that we are trying to really find a solution for. And we will reach out to this fabric and bring in individuals from different backgrounds and who may have a different perspective. And one of the things I share with the team is leadership is where you can find it. It’s not in titles or bands or grade levels. And sometimes, you can be so positively surprised by an insight a colleague could share, that you would have traditionally not engaged them because they were not part of your typical resource pool. So that’s one aspect of what we’re looking to do is really find every possible way to hear different perspectives. So to your point about from innovation standpoint, really having this continuous experimentation mindset and having these connected labs that reach out to your broader supply chain and be able to hear perspectives that shape your thinking and you, as a result, get to learn from those perspectives as well.

Sanjog Aul [00:42:21]:

So coming to your current situation where you are and you are trying to look at your own IT strategy and or how it aligns with the business strategy. Do you think you have that ability to look that, okay, next 12 months, this is what I’m going to do and I have got clarity on what technologies I will pick up and or what business processes we would go ahead and pick up? Or is the sandboxing going to continue?

Sangy Vatsa [00:42:58]:

Yes. I would maybe I’ll share with you what are the top four things that we are planning to focus on as part of the technology agenda for the bank in 2018. But maybe prior to that, I can provide a little bit of a or shine a little light on what our tech strategy, what we refer to as Tech Vision 2020 is comprised of. And at the fundamental level, it has two key components. One is strengthening our core on one hand and then transforming our future on the other. And you can think of all sorts of analogies from sports to education to construction, But you need both, a strong core and a set of transformational capabilities. Doing one without the other simply won’t cut it. And what we’ve done is we have established five tactics for each of these two key components of our strategy. And they provide us with enough flexibility, we believe, for us to continue to make adjustments as needed as the demand continues to emerge. And so at a fundamental level, our strategy has enough flexibility in it to be able to apply the established technologies to drive the business level of agenda we are driving. At the same time, not kind of getting complacent about the established capabilities and hence keeping our eyes very, very open and very hands on with experimenting with the newer capabilities that then become part of the core as you start to bring them into your establishment. So if I go back to your other part of the question, it’s for 2018. The way we have formulated our technology priorities for next year, there are basically four kind of core priorities. And the first one is drive customer centric digital delivery. The second is advance technology transformation number three is modernize information security and risk management and number four is enable human capital growth. If I maybe just take examples, very quick examples to make them a little bit more real for your listeners. In the area of drive customer centric digital delivery, there is a specific effort on how do we monetize our information assets by providing advanced analytical business solutions to our clients. And these clients could be in the commercial banking space, for example. In the area of advanced technology transformation, accelerating the cloud agenda that we have, so we have already embarked on a cloud priority in 2017 and made some really tangible progress. The next wave of the cloud capabilities is, for example, part of this advanced technology transformation priority. For the third item that I talked about, modernized information security and risk management, one of the specific targets and goals for next year is to create a frictionless and embedded security. So things tied to advanced biometrics, for example, would fall into that category. And in the area of enabling human capital growth, as I mentioned earlier during the segment, the focus on Comtech, the College of Technology and Innovation that we have established in the bank, A lot of focus will be on training our people on capabilities that are either tied to DevSecOps, this whole agility oriented approach to delivering new capabilities. So those are few examples of how we are looking to shape 2018. And I believe these four priorities are very encompassing of what’s important to us as a business, as a bank. And by putting these four priorities in front of us, it’s not tech for the sake of tech, it becomes very much a business oriented technology organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:47:22]:

No, what we are trying to build is, I would call it, Ferrari, right? The one with all the new age technology, the most optimized processes, the works. And security in my view is like brakes on a Ferrari. It should not prevent it from moving faster, but at least give you the assurance that you’re not going to topple over. Do you think as your agenda in 2018, security is going to be a line item and a forethought in every initiative and not just been given lip service, but embedded in the way you’re going to build a secure so you’ll do secured innovation, you will have secured outcomes, you’ll have SecOps and you will allow sustainability of an organization by keeping the focus on security, while it may be a sub function of what a CIO handles. But I guess CIOs and CISOs, whosoever is going to manage it, they have given up on the idea that they could prevent a breach. They are somehow praying and of course working hard to be able to respond well to the breach. I personally believe we could do better, but that requires us not looking at it as an answer to that. So what does 2018 bring in that regard?

Sangy Vatsa [00:49:02]:

Yes. And I fully agree with you. It should not be an afterthought. I would say in a very, very deliberate way, we when we established a guiding principle that I shared earlier on this call, I mentioned that one of the core components there, which says embedded security and compliance, it was for that reason that it should not be seen as an afterthought. So it is right in the middle of our guiding principle, laid out as a very critical, proactive measure that every technology colleague is expected to adhere to. If I take a few other examples where we are trying to make it part of our DNA, we had this whole focus on DevOps, this whole continuous delivery, continuous integration mindset. And we have actually, for 2018, decided to put DevSecOps. And security is right in the middle of your whole development and your operations focus. We have very commonly used this phrase, secure and fast, in 2017. And if I think of our number of priorities, including cloud, we first put the focus on implementing these security prescriptions before we decided to undertake any level of cloud deployment work. So I would say, in a nutshell, from my standpoint, it is something that needs to be very genuinely made part of your charter, and that is also the reason why of the top four things I talked about for all of technology for the bank for 2018, modernizing our information security and risk management is one of the foundational elements of our focus area for 2018.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:56]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, really thank you, Sangy, for sharing your thoughts on how you are positioning your team and your business for growth by taking a rather clear and cohesive approach to how technology not just getting enamored with what comes next or what we are dealing with now, but taking a cohesive approach to bringing all different elements of your business and technology together. So there is some sustained growth and a secured growth. And then basically see how 2018 can further stabilize a rather sandboxing and experimentation based IT or business crusades and make them mainstream so that the real value is the outcome. I really thank you for the way you’ve shared what you shared.

Sangy Vatsa [00:51:56]:

Great. Sanjog, I thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts and wish you and all your listeners a very happy and successful 2018.

Sanjog Aul [00:52:06]:

Thank you, and same to you. And listeners, hope you enjoyed. Please like us on Facebook, search for CTN. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and join our podcast. We are on iHeart, TuneIn, Stitcher and now on Spotify. So thank you again for listening to this segment of CTN. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host till next week. Take care, and God bless.