I’ve always been a proponent of digitizing and moving into a more tech-heavy world, but after reading the case study, it’s apparent to me that there are certain things that either shouldn’t be digitized, or digitized with extreme caution.
1. I think the most obvious companies that should be careful with over-networked systems are military contractors. Especially in the US, where contractors are responsible for developing a majority of military technology. With the way that these technologies are developed, it isn’t feasible for data and documents to be completely analog, so they need to be carefully secured from any potential threats.
2. Security companies also should be careful with over-networked systems, especially companies that handle physical security. These companies likely monitor constant video feeds from their various clients, so if those systems were to be compromised, first of all, those feeds of sensitive locations could be leaked, and the security rendered less effective. If the whole system were to be compromised without knowing, there would be no more security to speak of. The most important parts of the security system, such as camera feeds and important sensor information should be kept independently of the rest of the system.
3. One last sector that shouldn’t be as digitized are utilities such as power and water. Since these utilities provide basic necessities to large swaths of people, having them digitized could cause many problems in the case that they were compromised. For example, if a water utility was compromised, when going through water treatment, a malicious agent could purposely treat it incorrectly, harming a large population in a single blow. Important facilities like these should be kept mostly offline, or only able to access locally instead of over a network.
On the topic of the employee Sara speaking up, the company was honestly quite lucky that she did decide to speak up. It seems as if most of the male members of the team had kind of discussed themselves into an echo chamber, where everyone agreed on the path forward, without thinking of other alternatives. By speaking up, she introduced the team to the concept of hiring a consultant, and became a key member of the consulting team that eventually came up with a satisfactory solution for the CEO.
By speaking up, she challenged multiple norms – First, she was a woman in a workplace full of men; next, she was several levels below the key decision makers in the company – finally, she was a deputy to the COO, talking in a discussion about a technical change that had to be made. By being outside of all of these boxes, and challenging the norms of the discussion, she was able to bring in an outside perspective on the problem, that eventually ended up being the best solution. In our project, we are also looking to bring in feedback from outside sources, so that we always have fresh eyes on our product.
