With the advent of technology, there are sure to be risks. In Protecting the Cheddar, the CEO deals with an issues where technological advances pushes his company to be at risk, specifically data and process control access risks. In reflecting across the first prompt, I’ve thought that every single company which deals with something of value and deals with technology has risks. In thinking through a few obvious ones, most healthcare companies, both on the treatment as well as on the production side, control extremely sensitive data. With regards to treatment, if companies are holding patient data and this data is exposed, then there are possible physical ramifications as the safety of the individuals are now at risk because malicious attackers could blackmail the individuals. In a less extreme case, with regards to production, if data is exposed, then it makes it possible for insurance companies to potentially raise premiums. Thus, information that has no benefit by being on the internet should possibly be considered to not be added to the internet.
Reflecting on the question “Who Invited Her”, had the CEO ignored the woman, it was possible that there would be no one arguing against the continued proliferation of technology. It would be possible that the company would spend further millions on security without any sort of positive feedback or improvement. The woman went against all three mentioned barriers: 1) technical, 2) gender, 3) hierarchical.
Since the woman was not a technical engineer, it seems that the other voices were more inclined to not give her opinion weight. This is quite worrisome since if it’s only technical people talking, it becomes very easy for an echo chamber of similar opinions to move around. There needs to be a balance of ideas for optimal examination.
Since the woman was not the same gender as everyone else in the room (a man), she had to speak up against the gender barrier. Even for myself, I’ve seen this phenomenon happen in consulting where sometimes the loudest or most assertive or most masculine voice overpowers other opinions. It’s extremely important for the company to work against these biases to evaluate ideas for where and from whom they come from, rather than just looking at preconceived notions.
