Pain or Joy: Change Management 101...

Habits are hard to change.  It takes discipline and continuous perseverance.

When was the last time you changed something that increased your revenue?  Your health.  Or your safety and security.

Change and managing change whether in the corporate ranks of your Fortune 500 Global Enterprise or back in your own personal life at home is a true challenge.

Before you even thought about what you needed to change in your business or your own life, you probably have encountered one of two experiences:

• Pain

• Joy

Which one of these two experiences have you recently encountered?

You see, our human behavior is quite predictable and it is usually one of these two motivators in life that will change your behavior.

Educating yourself and others you care about requires that you sometimes utilize one of these motivators in order to initiate new change.  Let’s begin with “Pain”.

These realities are exactly what the evil in our world today continues to prey on.  Those individuals who are unable or unwilling to change, and to manage change in their lives.

“It is really very simple. 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.”  Page 19 - Achieving Digital Trust | The New Rules For Business At The Speed Of Light  - Author Jeffrey Ritter

In your own digital life, these habits may be as simple as using the same password on multiple accounts that each of us rely on, each day or each week of our lives.  You know who you are.

As the continued use of “Ransomware” remains so pervasive across the globe and is utilized by so many criminal gangs and nation states, each one of us must consider our personal and business habits.

At home and at work.

It is now time to change.  It is time to change your digital habits so you may avoid the pain and continue to have even more joy in your life.

Take action.

Start a new habit now of changing the weak password on your bank accounts.  Make it 20 characters, and make it random.  Easily addressed when you "Use a Password Manager App".  Then set a reminder to change it on January 1, April 1, July 1, and October 1 of each year.

“Microsoft warns that ransomware threat actor Storm-0501 has recently switched tactics and now targets hybrid cloud environments, expanding its strategy to compromise all victim assets.

The threat actor first emerged in 2021 as a ransomware affiliate for the Sabbath ransomware operation. Later they started to deploy file-encrypting malware from Hive, BlackCat, LockBit, and Hunters International gangs. Recently, they have been observed to deploy the Embargo ransomware.

Storm-0501's recent attacks targeted hospitals, government, manufacturing, and transportation organizations, and law enforcement agencies in the United States.” —BleepingComputer

After you have successfully accomplished this simple task in your business and in your own personal life, remember:

The “Pain” of doing this simple “Change Management” step in your life, will help bring you continued “Joy” for so many years to come…:)

Godspeed!

Cultural Cognition: The Velocity of our Future…

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination” - Albert Einstein

In the culture that you are part of, there are Trust Decisions being made in seconds based upon rules.  Yet your particular culture has evolved over time, also because of the affinity that your culture attracts other people, just like you.

The question is, who do you really aspire to be?

“How do you make trust decisions about people, associations, tools, or their value when the information upon which you will rely is increasingly digital and intangible?

In a global culture in which digital trust is under attack and degrading, how can you build and engender old-fashioned human trust with your customers, business partners, associates, and employees?” -Jeffrey Ritter - Achieving Digital Trust - P. 21

When you enter the realm of a culture that is constantly being recorded, digitized, captured, communicated and transferred, the behaviors and thoughts of people will be studied.  They will be analyzed and they will be judged.

What are you doing today to learn and improve how you operate in a digital world?  How are you making decisions between trust, and pure risk?

Our cultures are rapidly evolving towards “Artificial Intelligence” and tool sets to assist humans in making more informed decisions, faster.  Why?

Quality and Velocity.

What made you decide to learn Mathematics?  How did you decide to become a Software Engineer?

What made you decide to learn the Law?  How did you decide to become a Lawyer?

You like rules don’t you.  You have a hard time living in a world, where the rules are being ignored or broken.

How fast will you be able to adapt to the change in the “Digital Ecosystems” that mankind has created on our Earth?

The truth is, you and your organizational culture is already in the midst of an “S” curve and you must now “Grow or Die”.

To improve and adapt in a world, that is accelerating and whose velocity is reaching light speed requires new tools and mechanisms to assist us in our “Trust Decisions”.

For those cultures and situations where trust is at stake, the utilization of technological inventions will evolve and grow as the standards for evaluating the truth.

We as humans are already at a point where we are trusting digital devices and machines, more than we trust ourselves.

The Safety, Security and Velocity of the evolution of our Digital Future is at stake.

Now is the time for our cultures to recognize, question, learn and improve how we engage with our machines, our software, our Mathematics and our Law.

It is now all about our TrustDecisions…

The 3rd Planet: On The Edge of a Digital Precipice...

After reading the Washington Post on February 3, 2018, there is little debate in our world capitals, that we are on the edge of a digital precipice.

Mobile devices in the hands of humans, has exponentially changed the transnational landscape for our communications forever.  Yet this digital precipice is just inches away from a tremendous chasm in our cultural, social and legal way of life.

Every organization, now has substantial Operational Risks to manage, within the context of their group, company, enterprise, government and even family.  This alone is not a revelation.  However, if you are a Mother, Father, Brother or Sister, you are constantly challenged by the kinds of risks that plague anyone who dares to explore and utilize the benefits of the modern day Internet.

Our children are growing up faster, as they are exposed to the dark side of life, the evil that is present in our world.  They witness violence, revenge and all of the other negative attributes of society faster than ever before.

The outcomes of mother nature and our natural disasters are always front and center.  The digital controls and censors of broadcast television are no longer pervasive across the content and web sites available, to those who know how to navigate our IP-based digital oceans.

Operational Risk Management (ORM) is now each persons responsibility.  It is no longer in the hands of a few people, in a few departments at your organization.  It is not the role of a single person in your household, to make sure the family router is configured correctly.

If you are holding your latest "Digital Device" in your hand, or tapping away on the keyboard of your new lap top it is your decision to "Give" or to "Take."

Over a year ago, Adam Grant wrote his book.  To get some context in 13 minutes, you can watch this YouTube of his Ted Talk.

We have for years been exposed to the concepts of "Pay It Forward" or even other concepts of reciprocity.  The real question is:  Are you a "Giver or a Taker?"  You might be surprised to learn what Adam Grant's research uncovers.

So what?

The ethics and morals that are embedded in you at an early stage of your life, will most likely continue.  The influence your Mother and/or Father or early childhood caregiver provided you may have made a difference.  Maybe it was an old book they read to you, or someone asked you to read.

We all know that the words, content, pictures, videos and ideas on the other side of that tiny digital screen in your hand, is nothing more than a mirror, of our own human behavior.  Good or deleterious.

How will you use this iPhone tool today, to be a "Giver or a Taker?"  There might even be another option.  Turn it off and put it in a drawer.  At least for a few hours...but could you for a whole day?

When was the last time you donated your time, expertise, abilities or resources?  What will you do right now, to make a difference on the third planet from the Sun...

Trusted Enterprise: Digital Science in Business...

Digital Trust has been a cornerstone for any serious organization in our 21st century era.  The foundation for an Operational Risk Management (ORM) design, begins with the engineering science of a sound and endurable platform for "Enabling Digital Trust of Global Enterprises."
The Accenture Technology Vision 2016 verifies "Digital Trust" as one of five major trends:

As every digital advancement creates a new vector for risk, trust becomes the cornerstone of the digital economy. Without trust, digital businesses cannot use and share the data that underpins their operations. To gain the trust of individuals, ecosystems, and regulators in the digital economy, businesses must possess strong security and ethics at each stage of the customer journey. And new products and services must be ethical- and secure-by-design. Businesses that get this right will enjoy such high levels of trust that their customers will look to them as guides for the digital future.  Source:  Accenture Technology Vision 2016

The concept of data ethics as a significant component of establishing "Digital Trust" is vital.  When you introduce the concept of ethics to the dialogue on software engineering in the global enterprise, there are several key considerations.  Adding the moral governance of actions taken as a result of insights derived from the analysis of information, is also a valid vector in the design of trustworthiness for modern digital applications.  Yet this means nothing, without first understanding how humans make their decisions to trust.  How effective the entire ecosystem of "Digital Trust" becomes will always come back to the root.  Digital Ground zero.

Ground zero for "Digital Trust" is the actual "Trust Decision" itself.  The science of the "Trust Decision" elements and process has been the focus of researchers and academic study for years.  In order for us to truly understand how to achieve digital trust in business, we must first grasp the science and evidence of the core elements and root of our "TrustDecisions."  Does "Achieving Digital Trust" in the enterprise ensure that, as a business you are "Achieving a Defensible Standard of Care"?   Not necessarily.

The two concepts are mutually exclusive, yet they still have affinity for each other.  Accenture's Technology Vision, provides the enterprise with sound reasoning about how to create a path towards improving digital trust, especially as it pertains to the reputation benefits associated with the "Brand."  Adding the element of ethics, drives the consumer thinking that the business has addressed privacy requirements in terms of the legal rules and usability factors.

Incorporating the conversation in the Board Room about data ethics (collection and use) or how as an enterprise you must design-in legal controls in order to alleviate liability, requires something new.  It requires all interested parties to go back to the root.  How does the human make a decision to trust?  How does a computer make a decision to trust another computer?

The people sitting around the Board Room table are thinking about creating more wealth.  They are not asking themselves, how do computers trust other computers?  In our digital age where decisions are being made as a result of the execution of zeros and ones at light speed, someone has to be designing the trust architecture with the right people in the enterprise.  The question is now at hand, who is that person or business unit?

The answer is going to be different in each business or organization.  What is the maturity of the particular digital ecosystem and how vast is the landscape for the computing assets?  One fact that must be acknowledged early on, is that it probably does not entirely exist today.  The ideal unit of people and systems that are necessary to achieve digital trust, are currently spread out across the typical silos of a business architecture.  IT, Marketing, Legal, Info Security, Privacy perhaps.  However, the dedicated and funded "Digital Trust" team, task force or department, has yet to be established.  So what?

Continue to operate as you are.  Without the advantage of truly understanding the elements of "Trust Decisions" and how this is relevant to "Achieving a Defensible Standard of Care."  A trustworthy computing division, may have existed in the past at your organization, yet initially with another focused mission,  "Cyber Crime" intervention.  You see, the idea of trust and why it is so vital to the success of the information technology industry is not new.  Smart malware researchers and software engineers understood this at the dawn of the Internet.  So why is this any different?

Trustworthy computing in the 90's is not the same as the application of "Trust Decisions" in the year 2016 and beyond.   Especially today, with the speed of cloud computing adoption and the outsourcing of core data transactions across borders.  The international implications of privacy laws and the routing and storing of data outside of your native country, is now in play.  Negotiations by a Nation State to bypass traditional use of mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) is the new normal:

If U.S. and British negotiators have their way, MI5, the British domestic security service, could one day go directly to American companies such as Facebook or Google with a wiretap order for the online chats of British suspects in a counter­terrorism investigation.

The transatlantic allies have quietly begun negotiations this month on an agreement that would enable the British government to serve wiretap orders directly on U.S. communication firms for live intercepts in criminal and national security investigations involving its own citizens. Britain would also be able to serve orders to obtain stored data, such as emails.  Source:  Washington Post

The requirements have changed.  The next era of "Achieving Digital Trust" requires so much more.  It now requires standing up and providing substantial resources to the "TrustDecisions" Unit within the enterprise.  What does this mean to the future of the Trusted Enterprise?

It means that the Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Privacy Officer (CPO), General Counsel and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) will be using data and Digital Science to design a new architecture for the Trusted Enterprise.  They will deliver it to the desk of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) very soon.