The world is a scare place today. Every day we hear about different security problems – very large retail network informed me that their payment system was breached; large organization informs that customer databases with account information leaked, proprietary photos of celebrities available for general public, credit card numbers compromised. You can continue this list…
If you are responsible for IT organization, you should be scary to death. Think about engineering and manufacturing organization. How can you insure the protection of sensitive information assets? The time when a potential solution was just to cut a network cable into engineering working room is probably in the past. Even if you do that, mobile devices, global environment and need for supply chain access will simply put your effort in a trash can. EBNonline published a very interesting infographic called – The iPhone 6 Saga. It presents Apple’s global supply chain. I have no specific information about how Apple support security in their engineering, manufacturing and supply chains systems. What is clear – security is not optional there.
Security is well known topic in PLM community. Manufacturing companies are afraid of IP leaks for their most important intellectual assets. The question about how to protect data is on the top of the list when you evaluate PLM system. Introducing of cloud technologies and cloud PLM systems just raised the sense of urgency towards protecting highly sensible engineering and manufacturing assets.
Security of information in PLM system is multi-dimensional problem.. These days vendors are very vocal about their commitment to insure information is secured. It is easy to find this information available from vendors’ website and published white papers. A very simple Google search for “PLM security” returned a bunch of documents from Aras, Autodesk PLM360, Dassault Systems, Siemens PLM, Oracle Agile PLM and few others. Take a look on links and draw your opinion.
It made me think, security management is not a topic that can be covered by one vendor. In modern manufacturing world, you hardly can find a company that using engineering, data management and manufacturing software from a single software vendor. The situation won’t be different in a future. It means manufacturing companies will have to insure security of sensitive IP. My hunch, software vendors will have to talk to develop future security technologies and systems together.
My attention caught THEINQUIRER article Google, Dropbox and others launch Simply Secure to ensure open security. Simply Secure is an organization that aims to work on how to solve the problem of security in an open source community.
A collection of firms and internet thinkers have gathered under a Simply Secure banner and promised to make security and privacy tools that protect and serve. Google and Dropbox are players in the Simply Secure support group and are joined by the Open Technology Fund. Together they all hope to address web users’ concerns about their content and connections. “Internet software links us to our friends, allows us to transact across oceans, and forms a digital space for culture and society. Because these technologies provide forums for sensitive discourse and expression, we are all concerned about their security and privacy.
The world of product lifecycle management is very competitive. Vendors are in a constant search how to differentiate their solution. However, security technology is a thing that can benefit a community of customers to adopt technologies and to work together. Modern enterprise software is quickly adopting best technological practices and tools coming from open source and web world. Security best practice can be next place where adopting of some industry and open source standards can be beneficial.
What is my conclusion? Security is a big deal. By developing future security technologies and adopting some well known best practices, PLM vendors can raise the bar for how they can protect customers from security breaches. The world around us is highly connected these days. To solve security problems is not an optional thing. It impacts every company in modern global manufacturing world.
Best, Oleg
