娇色导航

CIOs are contending with a long list of issues, the growing diversity of which is noteworthy.

Perennial concerns such as securing the enterprise and keeping costs in line remain. But artificial intelligence and the current geopolitical climate are disrupting business as usual, adding evermore complexity and nuance to CIOs’ mandates.

So what exactly are CIOs finding atop their lists of concerns right now? We asked IT leaders to find out the big issues they’re facing today.

1. The rapid evolution of AI

Most IT execs have been implementing AI in their organizations for many years, but they’re seeing AI evolve at an ever-increasing clip. That makes keeping up with AI advancements one of their top issues.

“The AI explosion and how quickly it has come upon us is the top issue for me,” says Mark Sherwood, executive vice president and 娇色导航of Wolters Kluwer, a global professional services and software firm. “In my experience, AI has changed and progressed faster than anything I’ve ever seen.”

To keep up with that rapid evolution, Sherwood says he is focused on making innovation part of everyday work for his engineering team. “I want our engineers to innovate, and you can’t schedule that; it comes when it comes, so finding ways to let the team innovate has been a big focus,” he says.

Sherwood is also focused on change management. “We want people to get more and more comfortable with AI,” he says. “So now what we’re saying is: Don’t ask, ‘Where can we use AI?’ but ask ‘Why aren’t we using AI there?’”

2. AI for IT

CIOs are asking themselves and their own IT teams to identify where they can use AI to improve IT productivity.

Jamie Smith, 娇色导航at the University of Phoenix, has been tackling that question for a while and finding plenty of answers. “AI is reshaping the technology organization,” he says.

He points to changes in how his IT department creates software as an example. There, several of his 40 or so product teams have shrunk from seven to nine members to just three, as those teams have adopted AI to do more of the work. Moreover, each of the members on those several AI-enabled teams handle a wider range of tasks, rather than specializing.

Smith says IT workers need specific skills and traits to use AI successfully. They must be comfortable with risk and moving fast. They must have broad technical skills, not only highly specialized ones. And, of course, they need AI-specific skills.

3. AI-enabled cyberattacks

The rise of is another top issue for CIOs.

“Cybersecurity is always an issue; I’m just scared for different reasons every year. And this year it’s the increased sophistication in phishing, deepfakes, and other attacks that use AI,” Smith says.

As an example, Smith cites hackers using AI to create realistic websites mimicking vendors to submit invoices to accounts payable. He also points to hackers’ using AI to mine online executive profiles to impersonating those execs for nefarious purposes.

“The emergent piece is leveraging AI for sophisticated social engineering attacks and using those to go after the weakest security link, which is people,” he says.

4. Making the most of AIOps and event intelligence

Mike Trkay, 娇色导航at FICO, a data analytics company, also sees AI for IT as a top issue. But he specifically cites AIOps and event intelligence.

“Modern digital platforms generate staggering volumes of telemetry, logs, and metrics across an increasingly complex and distributed architecture. Without intelligent systems, IT teams drown in alert fatigue or miss critical signals amid the noise,” he explains. “What was once a manageable rules-based monitoring challenge has evolved into a big data and machine learning problem.”

He continues, saying, “This shift requires IT organizations to rethink how they ingest, manage, and act upon operational data. It’s not just about observability; it’s about interpretability and actionability at scale. In the era of AI-powered infrastructure, systems must move beyond threshold alerts to contextual insights and intelligent remediation. This directly impacts uptime, incident response speed, and customer experience.”

Trkay says FICO is applying AI models for anomaly detection, dynamic thresholding, event correlation, and probable root cause identification. And it’s integrating AI-assisted triage and automation to increase operational velocity and reduce toil.

5. Getting to value — and getting there fast

As CIOs consider where and how to use AI and other technologies, they’re looking for initiatives that will deliver value to their organizations, says Thomas Squeo, who as CTO at technology consultancy Thoughtworks Americas works with CIOs on addressing their top issues and IT priorities.

“The majority of the conversations I have with CIOs is around, ‘How do we shorten the time to value?’” he says.

Others note this, too.

Info-Tech Research Group says . “Leveraging the possibilities AI can yield requires an exponential response,” Info-Tech says in its report. “It’s the CIO’s responsibility to break down the silos between IT and the rest of the organization to realize this opportunity.”

And the 2025 Global 娇色导航Report from Logicalis, a UK-based tech infrastructure and services provider, notes that “technology leaders must balance innovation with real value creation” and that “95% of organisations are investing in technology to create entirely new revenue streams.”

However, the report highlighted the fact that “a large number acknowledge their next-generation technology investments haven’t yet delivered anticipated returns. This gap between investment and realised value has intensified pressure on CIOs.”

6. Geopolitics

CIOs today are also paying closer attention to geopolitical news and determining what it means for them, their IT departments, and their organizations.

“These are uncertain times geopolitically, and CIOs are asking how that will affect IT portfolios and budgets and initiatives,” Squeo says.

For example, some CIOs are repatriating overseas teams to countries where their organizations are located in response to the current global political climate, he says. Other CIOs are having IT teams and/or outsourced teams work only on initiatives supporting the organization’s work in the same countries where those workers are located, he adds.

Wolters Kluwer’s Sherwood, too, has felt the impact of the geopolitical climate, as he has been following the news around tariffs for the first time this year.

“We’re not a manufacturing company, so we’re not as affected as others, but it is still an issue,” he says, noting that any spikes in the cost of tech equipment for his global company as a result of tariffs could be noticeable.

Sherwood says he and his executive colleagues have resisted making reactionary moves and instead are taking a “wait-and-see approach on a lot of the news.” Still, he’s already considering which suppliers could be best positioned to help cushion the impact of trade wars and tariffs should that help be needed.

7. Costs and cost containment

Although costs are a perennial issue for CIOs, they have taken on heightened importance this year due to the significant increases for goods and services that have happened in recent years due to inflation and the geopolitical environment.

“Cost containment and control continues to be a significant issue, as we’re seeing massive increases in some technology costs such as licensing. Some CIOs are seeing multifold increases in renewal costs and they have very limited options at that point but to pay,” says Dave Borowski, senior partner and D.C. office lead at digital services firm West Monroe.

FICO’s Trkay also lists expense management as a top issue, although he cites costs related to AI and cloud as a primary driver.

“The rapid adoption of generative AI has led to escalating and often unpredictable cloud expenditures, particularly due to GPU-intensive workloads and fragmented pilot projects,” he says, adding that CIOs must balance innovation and fiscal responsibility. “This entails not only enabling cutting-edge AI solutions but also ensuring that these initiatives are cost-effective and aligned with business objectives. IT departments must implement robust governance frameworks to evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of AI projects and prevent resource wastage.”

To do that, Trkay says FICO is adopting a more disciplined approach to AI investments by prioritizing high-value use cases and focusing on AI projects with clear, measurable benefits to the organization; implementing cost optimization tools and applying AI to optimize AI; and optimizing infrastructure and leveraging multicloud strategies to select the appropriate GPU generations and instance types based on performance requirements.

“This shift from broad experimentation to targeted, ROI-driven AI initiatives represents a maturation in how organizations approach AI [where they’re] balancing innovation with sustainable financial practices, performance with accountability,” he adds.

8. Talent

“Talent has been a big issue for years and continues to be a big one,” West Monroe’s Borowski says, explaining that CIOs are focused on the availability of and competition for IT talent — both of which remain acute.

They’re also focused on determining the skills they’ll need in the upcoming year or two, which are more of a moving target now than they’ve ever been.

According to the 2025 from tech talent provider Revature, 77% of surveyed organizations reported being impacted by the IT skills gap and 84% of decision-makers were concerned about finding tech talent in 2025. Additionally, survey respondents said they were most concerned with finding qualified talent with the necessary skills (71%), getting talent delivered more quickly from IT staffing companies (57%), and upskilling/reskilling in-house talent (53%).

9. Security, including third-party risks

CIO.com’s 2025 State of the 娇色导航Survey listed security and risk management technology initiatives as a top area of IT spending, coming in No. 2 on the list of top technology initiatives planned by survey respondents for the year. (Machine learning/AI was No. 1.)

There’s good reason for that spending, Sherwood says.

“The bad actors continue to be smarter, and they continue to be better funded, and they are leveraging AI more than any others out there,” he says. “It’s what keeps us up at night.”

Sherwood uses that vigilance, saying, “I want us worried all the time, because confidence creates a false sense of security.” At the same time he acknowledges CIOs can’t be 100% locked down. So he leans on his organization’s risk register to make strategic decisions, reviewing the register monthly and adjusting it as circumstances require.

Diane Carco, a former 娇色导航and now president of management consulting company Swingtide, says in particular has become a much more significant concern for CIOs in recent years.

“Nearly all security risks now are coming from third parties, and more IT organizations have to beef up their third-party risk management,” she adds.

10. Preparing for the future

Advancements in AI, quantum computing, and other technologies along with the era’s constant disruptive transformations and the unpredictable nature of the world has savvy executives, including CIOs, future-proofing their organizations.

“I’m always asking, ‘Are we continuing to adapt to the ways things are changing,’” Sherwood says. “If I look at how much time I thought about future-proofing 10 years ago, it was less often. Things changed slower back then. Now it’s an every day or at least every week thought process, asking if we’re building out an organization that can thrive with this amount of change.”

For example, he now wants more “multisport athletes” on his team than pure specialists to ensure he has staffers who are willing and able to evolve as work changes. And he seeks out technology companies who can work as partners by expanding the ecosystems they bring to their deals to likewise help him prepare for whatever’s next.

Leading CIOs are also evolving themselves, as the role continues to morph into one of a change agent and strategic partner, West Monroe’s Borowski says. CIOs need to have the leadership skills to drive innovation and develop strategies as the role evolves if they, too, want to be ready for the future.