Dear Colleagues,
Interesting article today in the New York Times
on corporate security.
Product designs are singled out as one of the
key resources for protection by the CSO -- the
new breed of executive responsible for security.
Excerpts below. Full article on NYT web site.
A couple of these excerpts are also reminders
of the issues we must consider as designers.
Logistics, distributed work, virtual teams, and
different kinds of interlocked systems are all central
to the work of design today.
Best regards,
Ken Friedman
Article excerpts from NYTimes.com:
--snip--
In New Era, Corporate Security Looks Beyond Guns and Badges
May 27, 2002
By STEVE LOHR
HELP WANTED: Chief Security Officer.
Ominously, vaguely, federal officials are again warning
Americans to be on alert for some sort of terrorist attack.
Will corporate America be ready?
In the months since the Sept. 11 attack on New York
destroyed the World Trade Center towers, killed thousands
of workers and disrupted dozens of companies, businesses
have been forced to review their notions of corporate
security. And with those assessments has come realization
that the job calls for a new kind of corporate security
executive - one with breadth of experience, analytic
skills, business acumen and leadership qualities. The job,
in other words, calls for a chief security officer, or
C.S.O., as the emerging term of art would have it.
--snip--
It is too early to tell whether the C.S.O. will eventually
reach comparable stature. But even before Sept. 11, the
corporate security field had been steadily evolving in
response to the major business and technological
developments of the last two decades. Globalization,
deregulation, outsourcing, just-in-time inventory
practices, the embrace of information technology and the
rise of the Internet have all brought greater openness and
efficiency, along with new vulnerabilities.
The people managing security at large corporations have
also changed with the times, well beyond the "guns and
badges" days of mainly overseeing building security guards
and investigations of the "who stole the petty cash"
variety. In today's open economy, a point of access in
security terms is not just a headquarters office or a
factory gate, but also a computer network connection that
could be a gateway to a company's customer databases or
product designs.
--snip--
General Motors hired Mr. Christiansen in November from Visa
International, where he was a senior vice president. His
title is a new one at G.M., but the company had begun
recruiting him months before Sept. 11, an indication that
information security had already become a priority for
senior management. A big part of the comeback story at
General Motors in recent years has been its use of
information technology to forge closer links with
suppliers, shorten product design-and-development cycles
and manage its worldwide operations.
Yet operating in a global, networked world, where
collaboration and information sharing are essential, brings
new security risks. The access to computer networks for
employees, suppliers or contractors that can make a company
more nimble and fleet-footed also makes a company far more
vulnerable to theft, sabotage and information-warfare
attacks.
"It is the digitization of the enterprise that drives the
importance of information security to the top," Mr.
Christiansen said recently in his Detroit office. "Our car
designs are all mathematical models. You don't make a
single car, a single truck, without a computer system -
actually, several of them."
Major manufacturing corporations like General Motors have
been adapting their supply pipelines for years. In 1996,
G.M. learned a costly lesson in the potential pitfalls of
just-in-time inventory practices when an 18-day strike at
two factories that supplied brakes shut down 26 assembly
plants, reducing quarterly earnings by $900 million.
Afterward, the company reorganized its manufacturing and
supply channels so that production of critical parts was
more diversified and flexible, making it far less
susceptible to the loss of a single plant or two.
Mr. Christiansen's job is to make similar, risk-reducing
steps for the data networks that connect the company's
operations and people. "It is the equivalent of G.M.'s
nervous system," he said, "and if it were knocked out, it
would be as if suddenly your arms and legs don't work
anymore."
--snip--
The American Society for Industrial Security, a
professional organization with 32,000 members, wants to
hasten the evolution of the field. In the last few months,
the organization has been developing a detailed description
of the preferred qualifications and responsibilities for
"the new position of chief security officer." The work is
not finished, but the draft proposal says the chief
security officer - who would ideally hold a graduate degree
in business or law - should be a senior executive with
strong analytic, strategic and communications skills in
addition to security expertise.
"For corporate North America, 9/11 was a wake-up, bar
none," said Mr. Williams of Nortel, who worked on the
society's job-description document. "There will be a
lasting effect, and many corporations recognize they need
security leadership. But there is also a real need within
the security field to broaden itself."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/27/technology/27SECU.html?ex=1023497165&ei=1&en=57ba5f97029328e9
|
