IT Security Trends and Opportunities

FountainBlue’s November 2 VIP roundtable, on the topic of ‘IT Security Trends and Opportunities’. Please join me in thanking our gracious hosts at Lam Research and our executives in attendance. Below are notes from the conversation.

Our conversation around IT security trends ran the gamut across technologies, industries, and companies. Our executives in attendance had broad and deep experience across IT security, and agreed that: 

• It’s amazing how increasingly important IT security is for a company, with serious repercussions on brand and finances when there are breaches, and also for consumers and individuals as well. 
• Development and engineering is growing at an astronomical pace, which means that there are more devices, more software, more hardware, more data to manage and handle, and more opportunities for compromised security.
• It’s hard to predict security trends because privacy is a ‘whisper industry’, and leaders aren’t necessarily openly sharing breaches or incidents…
• There’s a war between the good guys who are in charge of keeping everything compliant, secure, and running, and the ‘bad guys’ who are trying to get access to the network for financial gain, for brand sabotage, and for political and other reasons. 
• It’s important to create a culture that respects the need for security, while also making sure that everyone can be productive.
• There’s a push-pull between regulators and innovators in this space, which adds complexity and challenges. But there’s a huge opportunity for companies and leaders willing to navigate the additional hurdles.  
• Security is not the responsibility of the IT professional. It is everyone’s responsibility – at work and at home.
• Security issues will impact our day-to-day lives, not just our work life. Our cars and roads, our healthcare organizations, our leisure activities, our shopping experiences may be the target of cyber attack. Be vigilant and informed, and make proactive decisions to protect your identity and your data.

Below is a list of some upcoming opportunities for IT security innovation:

• Solve the paradox between encryption and searchability.
• Create a solution which allows analytics and also respects privacy.
• Automate multi-step validations of addresses and domain names.
• Identify, monitor, and send alert on anomalies which occur within the network.
• Design software so devices can send alerts when compromising scenarios occur, or even quarantine itself. 
• Manage security at the hardware level.
• Design a solution which would weave together IP, hardware, software, operations security functionality.

Below are some thoughts on how best to stay on top of IT security trends:

• Accept that people will have multiple devices and want autonomy on when and how to use them. But provide reasonable restrictions and policies to ensure that the network and the data are also safe.
• Collaborate across leaders, organizations and industries to share best practices.
• Train and educate the workforce about the choices they are making which could unwittingly compromise people, infrastructure, operations, finances, brand, etc., Phishing attacks on your own staff may help you identify people who need more training around security, while keeping them and the network safe.
• There’s so much information out there around security, and so many ideas on technology solutions in this space. Make sure that there’s a business case for the security solution – a technology which someone would pay for and use, not just a cool technology which sits on a shelf.
• Adopt and consistently use a two-step authentication solution across the company.
• Don’t just have a backup, make sure that you can restore from a backup if a worse case scenario should occur.
• Try implementing ‘bug bounty’ programs, which challenge people to hack into networks. This will help your IT and security team keep on top of weak points across the network, and may even help with the cyber-security recruitment efforts! 

The bottom line is that no matter what technologies or processes you use to manage security for the company or for the home, it’s the people who will make the choices and decisions which could keep you safe and secure, OR compromised and vulnerable. So keep the people informed and educated, and help them make choices that will keep people, data, and infrastructure safe.

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Welcoming the Gift of Feedback

FountainBlue’s November 9 When She Speaks event was on the topic of ‘Welcoming the Gift of Feedback’. Below are notes from the conversation.

We were fortunate to have a broad range of panelists representing different educational and professional backgrounds and experience. They shared their thoughts on feedback warmly and openly.

It’s great when you give or receive good feedback for a job well done, and also great when you give or receive constructive feedback for a job which wasn’t well done. However, watch out when you’re getting good feedback for a mediocre effort – because the praise or award might not have meaning, AND the motivation to do better would suffer.

Watch also for the other type of error – when you get negative feedback for a job well done. If that happens, perhaps there’s a political motivation where someone wants to undermine someone else or take credit for their work. 

To mitigate these and other problems with feedback, ask questions and seek clarity so you understand what the feedback is, and what you can specifically do to improve.

It’s also important to understand the motivations of parties – the one giving and the one receiving the feedback. Once you understand the motivations, focus also on how to best communicate a constructive, productive message.

The focus must be on achieving measurable results, even if difficult and awkward conversations must take place. To give feedback well, be prepared with specific information and data to support the input. To receive feedback well, be open-minded and curious, while managing your own emotional reactions to the feedback.

Below is some specific advice around feedback.

• Millennials seek feedback more often than those from other generations. They welcome templates and coaching and continuously strive to bring their best selves to work, which makes it easy to provide feedback in some ways. However, it can also be a problem when their over-eagerness or their focus on generating immediate results either brings mediocre results or offends others on the team with more experience. Respect is something that people of all generations seek, and feedback can help members of each generation be more respectful of those from other generations.
• Providing feedback to men is different than providing feedback to women. Men tend to be more resilient, less sensitive, and have more vivid memories of the positive feedback over the negative feedback. Perhaps some women could learn from their more resilient example.
• It’s a difficult situation when someone is using feedback to serve their own ends, rather than providing feedback as a gift to help someone else to grow. To help address this situation if it happens to you, seek independent parties who can help you understand the motivations and actions of all involved. Strategize on how best to address the core issue, even if it means having to leave the leader or the team.

The bottom line is that life is a journey, and feedback is a gift which helps make that journey more fulfilling, helping you become your best self. Be selective about who you include in that journey, and open enough to receive that feedback. Be resilient and courageous enough to receive and learn from difficult feedback, if it’s productive for your personal and professional growth.

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Please join me in thanking our hosts at San Jose City College and our panelists for FountainBlue’s November 9 When She Speaks event, on the topic of ‘Welcoming the Gift of Feedback’

• Facilitator Linda Holroyd, CEO, FountainBlue 
• Panelist Cynthia Dote, Director of Engineering, Pure Storage
• Panelist Dana Gharda, Director, Global University Recruiting & Programs, Lam Research
• Panelist Nivedita Ojha, Senior Director, Product Management, IoT, Mobile, Cloud, Citrix
• Panelist Lena Tran, Ed.D., MBA, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Workforce Innovation, San Jose City College

See bios and invitation at https://www.tikkl.com/fountainblue/c/feedback

Advanced Manufacturing

FountainBlue’s October 5 VIP roundtable, on the topic of ‘Advanced Manufacturing Trends and Predictions’. Thank you also to our gracious hosts at Texas Instruments. Below are notes from the conversation.

We’ve heard the mantra for exceptional manufacturing decades: Faster, Better, Cheaper, but now it’s a bit different. The difference today is that it can’t just be ‘better’. For example, the quality must be exceptional enough, with LOW DFM (defects per million) to be safe for medical and automotive needs for example. And the results must be easily integrated into a host of other solutions, thereby raising the bar further.

Below is a synopsis of advice for companies leading advanced manufacturing initiatives for their organizations:

• Change is necessary and will happen quickly, moving in the direction of digital. Sometimes that change will be dramatic, moving from paper processing to digitalization and automation. Sometimes the change has already taken place, but there’s a problem integrating with other solutions. But change is inevitable and needs to happen quickly for companies to maintain that edge.
• The pressure to deliver faster, more integrated and better quality solutions is raising the bar for all stakeholders across the ecosystem. Companies and leaders who take that collaborative ecosystem view will set themselves apart and have that leadership edge, especially when change is happening so quickly.
• The type of materials used in manufacturing will become important. For example, titanium and nickel and plastics might be more suitable for medical, aerospace and automotive manufacturing solutions, and might work well with 3D printing capabilities.
• With the volume of data generated, we will need some standards for how data is accessed, managed and exchanged which would respect the privacy, access and security of all parties while also providing relevant actionable reports which would to help improve the product/service and also to better understand customer needs.

Below are some thoughts on some hot opportunities in advanced manufacturing:

• 3D printing for prototyping
• Manufacturing as a service
• Leveraging software to enable redundancy and parallel processing  
• Robotics and other automations
• AI and ML, leveraging huge volumes of data real-time
• Leveraging radio protocols rather than wifi
• Sensors on the manufacturing floor and across the supply chain
• Reports on power usage of individual units and components on the manufacturing floor
• Fingerprinting and other ID methods to better understand where parts have been
• Convergence of chemistry and materials to solve real-world problems

There was frequent mention of and many questions about the people and management challenges to get teams and companies innovating with advanced manufacturing solutions.

• Will we be able to attract, recruit and trained employees to ensure that machines, processes and tools run well? Can we recruit that diverse workforce as well?
• Will there be architects and designers who can define and automate processes so employees can efficiently maintain them?
• Will people be able to work with systems in order to sift the signal from the noise, given the mind-boggling volume of data generated real-time?
• Can we be intelligent and efficient enough to design and upgrade today’s systems for anticipated needs?
• Will we have a diverse and trained enough talent pool that can integrate our own solutions into that of other suppliers, integrators, providers in the ecosystem, in order to meet the demands of the customer?

The challenge to all executives leading advanced manufacturing is clear: how do you think and act strategically and execute seamlessly in order to oversee and manage the product, people, and service side of the business, and serve the sophisticated advanced manufacturing needs of very demanding customers?

Resources:

• Deming’s 14-Point Philosophy: A Recipe for Total Quality https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newSTR_75.htm

• Deming’s seven deadly diseases https://vanguard-method.net/library/systems-principles/demings-seven-deadly-diseases/

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271

Journey of the Soul

Journey of the Soul, by Linda Holroyd, August 26, 2018
Written on the hardwood deck outside our bedroom in the mottled sunshine
just before sending off a child on yet another adventure
Written also for all parents with children not-like-them

Journey of the Soul

Day
Time
Sunlight
Breeze
Wheezy

Warm
Filled
Glowing
Marvelous
Wheezy

Peace
Laughter
Smiles
Fullness
Wheezy

Full Circle
Perfect Being
Calm and Powerful
Wheezy

Life from my Loins
Power to my Strength
Embodiment of All that’s Glorious to me
Wheezy

From Radiant Magnificence
to Humble Powerlessness
from Obstinate Glory
to Overflowing Gratitude
Wheezy

The World sits beneath YOU
the Stars above applaud YOU
the Waves around you bask in your LIGHT
Wheezy

The path opens for you
your carriage approaches for you
your entourage awaits you
Wheezy

So prepare for your journey
the trail of Enlightenment
the Majesty of the Moment
the Balance between the Hope and the Fear
Wheezy

Go blindingly, trustingly, courageously forward
as is your way
Immersed in joyous abandonment
Daring to Laugh at the Impossible
Trusting in the Wisdom of Powers Bigger than even Thee
Wheezy

For the People around You
so need
your power
your strength
your vision
your purity
Wheezy

And I in the shadows
from the security of my mansion
Cheer louder than ALL combined
when you are revealed in full Magnificence
for ALL you Represent
for all that you SERVE
for the HOPE that’s entrusted to You
my Wheezy