CIO’s first 90 days checklist

The Ultimate CIO Survival Guide: Mastering Your First 90 Days with the Ninety-Day CIO Survival Kit, including DR and ITDR Checklists

Alright, CIOs—if you’re scanning this because a recruiter pinged you at 6:45 AM or because you’re three weeks into your new gig and already smell smoke, stick around. What follows isn’t fluff; it’s the playbook I hand my clients at Erwood Group before coffee cools. It’s the CIO’s first 90 day’s checklist. We’re talking a full teardown of your first ninety days, plus a no-BS audit of your IT Disaster Recovery (DR) posture and Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR)—all compressed into timelines that actually fit a human calendar. By the end, you’ll know why rushing these steps isn’t busy work; it’s the firewall between you staying heroic… or becoming the guy who gets grilled on a 60 Minutes segment about why payroll vanished in a ransomware storm or identities got hijacked in a phishing frenzy. 

Why Ninety Days Isn’t Optional (And Why Thirty Days for DR and ITDR is Non-Negotiable)

Most execs hand you a honeymoon period like it’s a gift. Translation: three months to prove you’re not the last CIO’s golf buddy in disguise. But here’s the math—sixty percent of new CIOs get fired before year one, per Gartner. The ones who survive? They hit three checkpoints: culture sniff-test, tech autopsy, and plans for DR and ITDR tighter than a SpaceX suit. Do that inside ninety days and you’re not just surviving—you’re scripting your next promotion. Miss it? Your name ends up in footnotes labeled “transition failure.”

Now flip the lens to Disaster Recovery (DR) and Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR). Ransomware payouts hit eight figures last quarter; outages cost Fortune 500 firms an average $9,000 per minute Erwood Group. If your DR is cloud backup + prayers, you’re betting house money. Thirty days is the sweet spot: long enough to surface real gaps, short enough to fix before the next board meeting. And for ITDR? With 90% of organizations hit by an identity attack in the past year, DoControl and phishing leading 35% of ransomware entries in 2025 (up from 25% the year prior) SpyCloud, identity is the new perimeter. Skip a thirty-day ITDR sprint, and you’re inviting AI-driven phishing (a top concern for 44% of leaders) Duo, VikingCloud or insider threats to crash your party. Below, we’re unpacking each checklist line-by-line—like a post-mortem on your own career if you skip it. Ready to dive into The Ultimate CIO Survival Guide: Mastering Your First 90 Days with DR and ITDR Checklists. Let’s go!

Part 1 of The Ultimate CIO Survival Guide: the CIOs first 90 days checklist:

The Ninety-Day CIO Survival Kit

1. Get to Know the Team & Culture (Week 1–2)

Don’t schedule lunches; ambush them. Walk onto floors unannounced, grab coffee from the intern machine, ask why the dev team eye-rolls when you mention Jira. 

You’re hunting for:

– Silos: If IT won’t talk to sales, your ERP upgrade is dead on arrival.

– Morale leaks: Watch body language—who laughs at dad jokes, who stares at the exit sign?

– Shadow leaders: Formal org charts lie. Real power hides in the Slack DMs.

Pro tip: Keep a private notepad labeled “Heroes vs. Hazards.” By day fourteen, you’ll have intel worth six months of HR surveys.

2. Audit Infrastructure (Week 2–4)

Grab your laptop, disable airplane mode, and dive deep.

Check Everything:

– Hardware census: Log into every switch, rack, and fridge-cold server. Look for EOL gear—Windows Server 2012? That’s a lawsuit waiting.

– Cloud sprawl: Spin up AWS Cost Explorer; if you see prod-db in five regions without a reason, congratulations, you’re bleeding cash.

– Vendor autopsy: Pull the last twelve months of invoices. Spot SLAs missed? Fire warning shots—politely—now.

Reality check: Ninety percent of outages trace to “human didn’t know.” Document everything; this becomes your budget ammo.

3. Governance & Processes (Week 3–5)

Ask for the last audit report—then laugh if it’s over a year old. CIOs who inherit chaos don’t fix it; they weaponize audits.

Audit:

– Policy hunt: If there’s no written change-freeze window, guess who gets paged at 3 AM? You. 

– Project graveyard: Kanban board with red cards? That’s sunk cost therapy—sunset ruthlessly.

– Compliance roulette: GDPR fines start at twenty million euros. Run a gap scan; treat findings like debt collectors.

Warning: No written Disaster Recovery Policy, no mention of DR in IT job descriptions. Another red flag that may hint at deeper problems. I’ve witnessed organizations without proper DR plans in place, where entire IT teams declared it’s not part of “this year’s initiative or roadmap,” and not part of their “regular job duties.” 

4. Align with Business Goals (Week 4–6)

CFO wants cost-cuts? CIO wants innovation? Align or die.

– Shadow a sales call—feel the pain of slow CRM.

– Time a legacy app yourself: If login takes thirty seconds, multiply by employee headcount. That’s your ROI pitch.

– Translate tech: “We’ll shave two hours off month-end close” beats “optimize ETL pipeline.”

5. Risk & Security (Week 5–7)

No CIO sleeps after skipping this:

– Run a penetration test—budget $25k if you must. One breached credential later? It’s $2.5 million.

– Patch audit: Anything unpatched since January 2023 is a billboard for hackers.

– Incident playbook: If it’s “call me,” rewrite it. Automation + clear RACI = sleep.

6. Build Credibility (Week 8–9)

Town hall on day ninety: “Here’s what I found, here’s what we fix next quarter.” Include a slide titled “Your Quick Win”—maybe slashing shadow IT spend by fifteen percent. Credibility isn’t permission; it’s proof you deliver before asked. 

Part 2 of The Ultimate CIO Survival Guide: CIOs first 90 days checklist: 

The Thirty-Day Disaster Recovery Deep Dive (Because Ninety Isn’t Fast Enough for Catastrophe)

Disaster doesn’t RSVP. Yet most DR plans read like IKEA manuals—pages of diagrams, zero practice. We’re changing that. Target: thirty days, zero excuses.

1. Review the Plan (Days 1–3)

Grab the binder labeled “DR Plan” from the shelf. Is there one? If it’s dusty or dated pre-2023, that’s your first red flag. (Pro tip: If it doesn’t exist, treat day one like a five-alarm fire.) Skim for basics: What’s the RTO (Recovery Time Objective)? RPO (Recovery Point Objective)? If they’re “as soon as possible” or blank, you’re basically winging it during the next outage. Cross-reference against real assets. Does it cover that shiny new SaaS tool your marketing team adopted last quarter? Gaps here aren’t oversights; they’re career landmines. Why three days max? Because every hour wasted reviewing means delayed fixes, and in a world where 93% of companies without DR go belly-up after a major data loss (per FEMA stats), procrastination is professional suicide. Document findings in a shared doc. Title it “DR Reality Check.” Flag high-priority holes like unbacked-up edge devices or forgotten vendor dependencies.

2. Inventory Assets & Dependencies (Days 4–7)

Time to play detective. Map every critical system: servers, apps, databases, even that ancient mainframe in the basement that’s somehow still running payroll. Use tools like CMDB (Configuration Management Database) if you’ve got one; otherwise, fire up Excel and start interviewing.

Key hunts:

– Dependencies: Does your ERP rely on a third-party API that goes down during peak hours? Note it.

– Prioritization: Tier assets—Tier 1 for mission-critical (e.g., customer-facing portals), Tier 2 for support functions. Anything below? De-prioritize ruthlessly.

– Data flows: Diagram how info moves; bottlenecks become outage amplifiers.

This isn’t busywork; it’s your insurance policy. Miss a dependency, and a simple cloud blip turns into a multi-day blackout. CIOs who nail this early report 40% faster recovery times (IDC research). By day seven, you should have a visual map—bonus points for using Lucidchart or Visio to make it board-presentable. Share prelims with your team; their “oh yeah, forgot about that” moments are gold.

3. Assess Risks & Vulnerabilities (Days 8–12)

Flip the script: Assume everything breaks tomorrow. Run a tabletop exercise—gather your top lieutenants, simulate a ransomware hit or data center flood. What crumbles first? Use frameworks like NIST or ISO 22301 to score risks: probability vs. impact.

Dive deep:

– Cyber threats: Ransomware, DDoS—check your backups for immutability (if they’re not air-gapped, hackers laugh).

– Natural disasters: If your HQ is in hurricane alley, does the plan include geo-redundant sites?

– Human factors: Insider threats or that one admin with password123.

Quantify: Assign dollar values. e.g., one hour downtime = $X lost revenue, use our free downtime tool for fast analysis. Also, tools like RiskWatch or even free ones from CISA can help. Why cram into five days? Because fresh eyes spot what incumbents miss, and delaying means you’re vulnerable longer. End with a risk register; prioritize top five for immediate mitigation. This step alone can slash potential losses by 50%, turning you from a reactive firefighter to a proactive strategist.

4. Test & Validate the Plan (Days 13–20)

Theory’s cute; reality bites. Schedule tests—start with walkthroughs, escalate to full simulations.

Key flavors:

– Failover drills: Switch to backups; time it. If RTO is four hours, but it takes eight, recalibrate.

– Restore tests: Pull data from backups. Corrupted? Panic now, not during a crisis.

– Vendor involvement: Loop in cloud providers (AWS, Azure)—test their SLAs under load.

Document failures mercilessly: “Email server restore failed due to outdated certs.” Involve cross-teams—finance, legal—to expose blind spots. Pro tip: Record sessions; playback reveals communication breakdowns. Eight days might feel rushed, but it’s deliberate: Frequent testing builds muscle memory. Stats show tested plans recover 2-3x faster (per DRJ). If the budget’s tight, use free tools like Veeam for basics. By day twenty, you’ll have a “Lessons Learned” addendum—your roadmap to perfection.

5. Update, Train & Communicate (Days 21–27)

Plans evolve or die. Incorporate test findings: Tighten RTOs, add automation (e.g., scripts for auto-failover).

Then train:

– Role-based sessions: Execs get high-level; techies dive into procedures.

– Drills for all: Make it mandatory—use gamification if needed (leaderboards for fastest response).

– Communication protocols: Who notifies the board? Media? Update the playbook with templates.

Why seven days? Momentum matters—fresh insights fade fast. Emphasize buy-in: A trained team reduces human error by 70% (Gartner). Roll out via all-hands emails or intranet posts; make it accessible, not buried in SharePoint purgatory.

6. Final Review & Go-Live (Days 28–30)

Circle back: Re-review the updated plan against the original gaps. Obtain sign-offs from stakeholders, the CFO for budget implications, and the CEO for alignment. Set recurring cadence: Quarterly tests, annual audits. Document everything in an executive summary, your “DR Shield” report. Why end strong? Because a polished plan isn’t just compliance; it’s your leverage for more resources. CIOs who deliver this in thirty days earn trust capital that lasts for years.

Part 3 of The Ultimate CIO Survival Guide: CIOs first 90 days checklist:

The Thirty-Day Identity Threat Detection and Response (Because Identity is the New Perimeter)

In 2025, identity attacks aren’t “if” they’re “when.” With detections spiking five times over last year and 81% of hacks tied to identities, your IAM (Identity and Access Management) setup is the front door hackers kick in. Most orgs detect threats too late. Only 32% catch them at the initial compromise. This thirty-day sprint turns that around: from reactive panic to proactive lockdown. Zero excuses. Identity breaches can cost millions and your job.

1. Review Current IAM Posture (Days 1–3)

Dust off your IAM policies, MFA configs, and access logs—if they’re pre-2024 or scattered across sticky notes, red alert. (Pro tip: No centralized IAM? Day one is emergency mode.) Check basics: Is MFA enforced everywhere? Privileged accounts audited? Password policies beyond “change every 90 days”? Cross-check against tools like Active Directory or Okta dashboards. Spot gaps like shadow admins or unmonitored SaaS logins; these are hacker highways. Why just three days? Delays mean exposure; fresh CIO eyes uncover what teams normalized. Document in an “IAM Health Check” doc, flagging urgents like weak auth on critical apps. This sets the stage. Ignore it, and you’re blind to the 90% of orgs already breached.

2. Inventory Identities & Access (Days 4–7)

Go full CSI: Catalog every user, service account, device, and API key. Use automation. Azure AD reports, SailPoint if available; otherwise, scripts or Excel hunts.

Key targets:

– User types: Employees, contractors, bots—note lifecycles (onboard/offboard).

– Access mappings: Who has what? Over-privileged devs with prod access? Flag ’em.

– External ties: Federated logins, vendor accounts, and map dependencies.

Prioritize: High-risk identities (e.g., C-suite) receive Tier 1 scrutiny. This isn’t admin drudgery; miss an orphaned account, and it’s a backdoor. CIOs who map early cut breach risks by 40% (per industry benchmarks). By day seven, build a visual dashboard—use tools like Microsoft Visio or draw.io. Share drafts; team feedback uncovers hidden gems like forgotten IoT devices.

3. Assess Risks & Vulnerabilities (Days 8–12)

Assume compromise: Run threat modeling sessions. Simulate AI-phishing or credential stuffing. Score with frameworks like the Erwood Group’s Tech Stack Cybersecurity Risk Evaluation™ (TSCRE™), NIST 800-53 or MITRE ATT&CK for identities: likelihood vs. damage.

Deep dives:

– Threat vectors: Phishing (up 10% as ransomware entry), insider leaks, supply chain hits.

– Vulns scan: Weak MFA, unpatched IAM tools—use vuln scanners like Nessus on identity endpoints.

– Behavioral baselines: Anomalous logins? Set alerts for geo-jumps or odd hours.

Quantify impacts: A breached exec account = $Y in data loss. Free CISA tools or paid ones like CrowdStrike help. Five days max because threats evolve daily. Delaying leaves you exposed longer. End with a prioritized risk matrix; top threats (e.g., AI-phishing for 44% of leaders) get immediate fixes. This transforms you from a gatekeeper to a guardian.

4. Implement Detection Tools & Monitoring (Days 13–20)

Detection without action is delusion. Roll out or tune tools: SIEM integrations (Splunk, ELK), UEBA (User and Entity Behavior Analytics) for anomalies, or ITDR platforms like those from CrowdStrike or Huntress.

Key actions:

– Alert setups: Real-time for suspicious logins, privilege escalations.

– Integration tests: Hook IAM to EDR—simulate a phish, ensure it flags.

– Coverage checks: Monitor hybrid environments (on-prem + cloud); air-gap if needed.

Document setups: “Alert X triggers on Y event.” Involve vendors for quick wins. Eight days will feel intense, but it’s worth it for the momentum. Tested detection halves response times (Gartner). If the budget’s slim, start with open-source like OSSEC. By day twenty, have a “Detection Dashboard” with sample alerts. Proof that your net is cast wide.

5. Develop Response Plans, Train & Communicate (Days 21–27)

Plans without people flop. Build IR (Incident Response) for identities: Playbooks for account lockdowns, forensics, notifications.

Then train:

– Tiered sessions: Execs learn escalation; teams practice containment.

– Simulations: Phishing drills, breach role-plays. Use tools like KnowBe4.

– Comms framework: Who alerts regulators? PR? Include templates.

Why seven days? Fresh assessments fade; lock in gains now. A drilled team slashes errors by 60% (per studies). Deploy via company-wide memos or LMS. Keep it engaging, not eye-glazing.

6. Final Review & Go-Live (Days 28–30)

Loop back: Validate updated ITDR against initial gaps.

Secure sign-offs. Legal for compliance, board for buy-in.

Schedule ongoing: Monthly reviews, bi-annual tests.

Compile an “ITDR Fortress” exec summary. Your business case and ammo for funding.

Ending strong? It’s not optional; it’s your shield against the identity detection surge. Deliver in thirty days, and you’re the CIO who turns threats into triumphs.

Wrapping It Up: Your CIO Legacy Starts Now

Ninety days for the big picture, thirty each for DR and ITDR. It’s not arbitrary; it’s battle-tested at Erwood Group, where we’ve steered dozens of CIOs through transitions without the drama. Skip these, and you’re gambling with uptime, identities, reputations, and bottom lines. Nail them? You’re the visionary who future-proofs the enterprise.

This covers the basics of the CIO’s first 90-day checklist. Click on the links to grab your checklists and slay your role as CIO. 

If this resonates, visit Erwoodgroup.com for a complimentary consultation. Let’s audit your setup before the next storm hits. Remember, in IT, preparation isn’t paranoia; it’s power. Stay sharp, CIOs.