Sunday, April 19, 2009

A Visit to the Henry Ford Museum - A look at American Ingenuity



This weekend we visited the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn MI. It is a huge museum that showed America's manufacturing creativity from the mid 1800’s to the present. I am always amazed how Mr. Ford developed the first real assembly line. For $500 one could buy a model T Ford and get it in any color, as long as it was black. Talking to the museum folks I learned that the Mr. Ford had wanted to offer other colors but each color took different times to dry and that would impact production.

It was also interesting to learn about patent issues that Mr. Ford and others faced, such as a patent challenge over Gasoline Engines (he won). The need to keep the details of the product designs confidential was also evident throughout the tour.

That brings me to a great lecture I attended this week at the Grand Rapids Information Security Systems Association given by Steve Lassig on Data Loss Protection. Today we still face many of the same challenges that Mr. Ford faced when he as making the Model T. There is technology available today to assist in the identification and prevention of data loss, but it all starts with the need for management awareness and commitment. In many ways we are lucky that state and federal requirements are bringing this awareness to the forefront.

Many organizations today require the support of an independent consultant, such as Ada Business Technology to assist in the creation a comprehensive security plan and provide their leadership in the implementation. The question that each enterprise must ask themselves is: What is the cost of not implementing a comprehensive security plan?

Please feel free to contact me at mshurr@AdaBusTech.com and visit our site at http://www.adabustech.com/

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