Deploy MAC filters, obscure identifier feedback, employ replay-resistant authentication: Cyber security techno-advice can be as difficult to unwrap as the excess packaging around children's toys. (How many metal staples does it really take to secure Barbie's head?)

 

Two of the fundamental principles underlying cyber security - integrity and availability - are especially familiar to manufacturers who pursue quality practices. Products match customer specifications with limited rework or spoilage/waste. Production operations are unimpeded by employee injury, equipment failure, or component/material sourcing delays. Manufacturing excellence! Cyber security is, at its core, about business process excellence through data quality: "data fit for its intended uses in operations, decision-making, and planning" (Redmann 2013). This is the end game - integrity and availability with confidentiality as a key factor in reducing the risk that a competitor or adversary can steal or misuse the assets you've worked to acquire: trade secrets, intellectual property, money, equipment, customer data, employee information.

 

Kaizen, the continuous (kay) improvement (zen) philosophy that underlies many manufacturing quality programs, is adaptable to data quality or cyber security programs as well. Incremental changes build organizational resilience - and compliance with statutory and legal requirements that, at first glance, may seem too complex, technical, and daunting. So what are some easy first steps in the cyber kaizen process? How can we adapt the kaizen 5S to our cyber world? (...)