Boards Across Industries Address Digital Infrastructure Risks, Survey Reveals
Growing Board-Level Focus on Digital Infrastructure Vulnerabilities
By Leo Marchandon
Sept 8 (Reuters) - Large companies and public bodies are increasingly scrutinising their dependence on critical digital infrastructure as geopolitical tensions, export controls and cyber threats expose vulnerabilities that were once largely taken for granted, a Capgemini survey published on Tuesday showed.
Responses from executives at 1,300 large organisations across 11 countries suggest digital infrastructure is increasingly being treated like energy and physical supply chains, requiring board oversight, contingency planning and investment.
Shifting Perceptions of Digital Risk
"There used to be a sense of these risks. Now they have become concrete," said Nicolas Gaudilliere, the Capgemini executive who led the study.
Resource Allocation and Risk Identification
Companies are allocating resources to identify critical risks, and some, including Airbus, have begun making changes to reduce dependencies on key technologies and providers, the report said.
Impact of Geopolitical Events
Gaudilliere said recent events had made those dependencies impossible to ignore, pointing to attacks on data centres and telecommunications infrastructure during the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East as examples of risks that have become more visible.
Digital Sovereignty and Substitutability
Defining Digital Sovereignty
Charles-Pierre Astolfi, chief information officer at France's National Institute of Geographic and Forest Information, said digital sovereignty was fundamentally about "substitutability" and the ability to replace critical technologies when needed.
Executives associated digital sovereignty with business-critical assets, from proprietary data and AI models to intellectual property.
Global Relevance of Digital Sovereignty
Gaudilliere said the issue was not confined to Europe.
"It's not a geographical notion," he said. "We're not opposing countries."
The question, he said, is less who supplies a technology than whether organisations can switch providers if circumstances require it.
Challenges in Replacing Critical Providers
Timeframes for Replacement
Nearly half of the organisations surveyed said replacing a critical provider would take between three months and a year, while more than a third said it would take longer than a year.
Focus on Data and AI Model Control
Rather than replacing technology providers wholesale, organisations are increasingly focused on ensuring they retain control of valuable data, AI models and other critical workloads that would be difficult to replace if access were disrupted.
Conclusion
(Reporting by Leo Marchandon in Gdansk; Editing by Matt Scuffham)
