Ransomware vs listeria:
Healthcare is a foremost concern and risk for over-networked systems. If hackers were to target hospital equipment on any level, it could literally threaten patients’ lives beyond the risk of compromising their privacy and security. Health records being stored digitally has risks as well; again, for privacy and security. I think a generally acceptable working rule of thumb is that anything that wasn’t digital before doesn’t need to be digital now (especially if things have been fine without digitizing until then). In the case of the cheese recipes, they were clearly passed down for multiple generations without being digitized, so there’s no real reason or benefit of integrating that now. Those that should be carefully guarded are entities that are digital at their core; ie, existing machines, and cannot be replaced with a non-digital alternative.
Who invited her?
The discussion might have continued down unproductive paths like the earlier discussions and led to no actions being decided upon or taken. She contributed an insight and a potential avenue that was outside peoples’ comfort zones and challenged the company’s status quo operations. Without her proposal, they would not have hired a consultant to come validate and evaluate their systems. Without his inspection, it’s true that the company would not be facing the difficult decisions it is facing now in terms of its future policies with regards to scaling back on digitization and bringing humans back into the loop and the implicit and explicit consequences of doing so. But without that inspection, they would not know (until something bad happened again probably) how vulnerable their infrastructure was (and where it was vulnerable) and would be unprepared to prevent against the situation.
Some implicit assumptions that she challenged were speaking out about technology as someone with a nontechnical role, and speaking out as a non-executive and as a woman, where most of the vocal parties and leadership were men. It is important that she made her opinion and thoughts heard because all of the technical and hierarchical and gender roles in place still do not preclude the fact that everyone has opinions and ideas worthy of being heard from their own unique perspectives and experiences, and superficial attributes aren’t an indicator of the ability to propose ideas.
