Digital Velocity: Integrity of our Trust Decisions...

“In the foreseeable future, we will not function as a global society without the Net and the immense digital resources and information assets of our society.

The addiction is established—commerce, government, education, and our neighbors offer no option other than to require that we rely upon digital information in making decisions.

But we will not function successfully if the war for control of those assets is lost.

The battlefield, however, is the one on which trust is to be gained or lost—trust in the information we use, trust in the infrastructures that support us, and trust in the decisions we make in a digital world.

If we are to turn the tide in the war for control, and prevail in maintaining a digital infrastructure through which we can sustain societies and a functional, global economy, we must design and achieve trust in the digital information we use, trust in the infrastructure of the Net through which we live, and trust in the decisions we make in a digital world”… 

- Achieving Digital Trust - Page 19 by Jeffrey Ritter

As you read these words on the screen before you, think about their origin.

Think about the many paths these words traveled from the keyboard, to digital encrypted storage, to WiFi, to WireGuard Internet Protocol, to LAN, to WAN, to Data Center, to ISP, to CDN, to ISP and finally to your screen, wherever you may find yourself on Earth.

“Digital Trust” in our next decade of human progress, will be a vital imperative. Even more of a challenge, will be the integrity of our growing “Trust Decisions”.

“Trust Decisions” that are essential to your personal and work livelihood, require all of the elements of creating “Digital Trust”.

"What is most critical in all of our future infrastructures, is a more sound and trustworthy foundation. A level of integrity, that shall be our greatest aspiration."

The origin of data is already being created by the software code we have written and it is autonomously being processed, not by neurons but with just the digital code processed by billions of semiconductors and Virtual Machines.

The integrity of the mathematics and the integrity of the data itself is now evermore at stake. The forensics on data has been evolving and the science of forensics of data is gaining velocity.

How fast will you be able to verify that these words were written from neurons and from the cognitive functions of a human? Or could it be Watson?

The velocity of our “TrustDecisions” before us in 2021 and our digital future will continuously rely on our ability to ensure the integrity of the origin and the journey of the data we consume by the Terabyte each day…

Supply Chain Risk: Study the Past...

Mitigating “Information and Communications Technology” (ICT) Supply Chain Risks has been evolving for over three decades. How might you consider your maturity or effectiveness in 2021?

• Supply Chain Security

• Physical Security
• Cyber Security
• Personnel Security (inclusive of Company Leadership)
• Supply Chain Integrity
• Hardware Integrity
•  Software Integrity
• Supply Chain Resilience
• Supply Chain Quality
• Supply Chain Management and Supplier Governance

What has your organization done in the past 3 years to raise the level of trusted supply chains to ensure the Security, Integrity and Resilience for products and services?

Unfortunately, organizations during 2020 encountered significant set backs in achieving higher levels of trust in security, integrity and resilience due to the entire “Work-From-Home” (WFH) reality.

The better news is that the levels of adoption of new processes for working remote have been established and refined in the past 14 months.

Now ICT Leadership shall move more rapidly to raise the assurance and the trustworthiness of the suppliers and products they have adopted for our "4th Industrial Revolution".

As "5G" emerges into our next generation of the “Internet-of-Things” (IOT) and the increasing integration with “Operational Technology” to the Internet and race back to the Moon expands, our supply chain risks will be more exponential.

A recent Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis Reference Aid (RA) April 16 2021, captured data from the US Department of Justice National Security Division:

Analysts identified 94 individuals from a single country arrested over the past 3 years involved in “Espionage Activity”. This includes:

• Proprietary US Intellectual Property
• Academic Research
• Private Sector Sensitive Information

So what?

As the leader of your small innovative business, or the CxO of a Fortune 500 company or the VP of Information Technology at a private mid-size organization, you should increase your “Supply Chain” focus now.

Industry 4.0 is on our near horizon and you will never have all of your employees or suppliers inside your own four walls or virtual perimeter.

The United States is entering a new era of progress and simultaneously another compliance / governance set of rules, laws and mandates.

Business leaders focus on “Operational Risk Management” (ORM) and Critical Infrastructure Protection will be rising again in 2021, just as the last 2008-2009 financial sector risks became a reality.

What can you do next?

“Information and Communications Technology” (ICT) Supply Chain Risks start from the inside and remain your greatest vulnerability. Perhaps the best way forward next, is for us to study the past. Read this one page synopsis of just one event in 2009 here…

Discontinuity: Breakpoint To Our Future…

Can you feel the wind in your face? The smell of the ocean breeze as you watch the sun set into the Pacific.

There is a sense of change in the wind before us. Our world is in great anticipation of new and promising projects, endeavors and a renewed sense of daily purpose.

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 will never be forgotten. It is now part of our "Global History," just as our other historical challenges.

Former plagues including new vaccine discoveries, inventions such as the automobile, or our human space travels to the Moon.

Our history that includes World Wars and others that became apparent the morning of September 11, 2001.

Yet the new opportunity for our personal and our organizational change that is now on our doorstep, shall not be disrupted.

How might you proceed, into the next 365 days with the ambition to learn from our history?

What will you pledge your allegiance to, as you break through all that has held you back during this pandemic, certainly not the last one that we will endure here on Earth.

After our first quarter of 2021, our United States ambition and enthusiasm is building towards a tremendous future. A future that will be full of new found innovation and promise.

You see, the "Discontinuity" in society creates breakpoints. Just as The "Arab Spring" and the forming digital systems social revolution that now lies before us, it creates new crisis and simultaneous opportunities.

Both are challenges for people, business, governments and global economies to analyze and rationalize.

Will you innovate? Or stagnate?

If you are a policy maker in your organization, what are you doing to innovate?

Do you have new solutions for the changing Operational Risks to be encountered, as your employees and citizens travel the globe and make vital decisions for your enterprise?

If you are the main policy bodies within your government, what have you done lately to find new creativity to address the potential opportunity before you?

If you are the head-of-household, how might you pivot to a new independent "Gig" to enhance your dreams?

In either case, the speed of change and the ability to learn and adapt, will certainly decide your future...

True Faith: Searching Together...

Who do you “Love and Trust” in your particular life? 

The older you become, the more you realize that these two feelings are the core foundation of so much of our lives.

Remember, it is clearly about “Who” you Love and “Who” you “Trust.”

When you care about someone that you Love and Trust, you will find a way to spend more time with them. In your mind and in your spirit.

You will experience the lessons of learning from your feelings of love or trust and caring for that special other.

"Continue your faith in caring for those you “Love and Trust.”

If you lose one or the other feeling, it will have an impact on you. The ultimate goal is to keep both.

Having “True Faith” in someone, requires both of these to find what you are really in search of together. 

As you navigate the opportunities and the challenges in your relationships within family, friends, working or community-based endeavors, think of where you place your "Faith."

Always remember Easter…