Security and Privacy

Information resources can also be the key to the many pressing security and privacy issues we face.

In the airline industry, for example, the hot issue is security. Pilots, crew and passengers all want to feel safe in the air. They also want to be able to fly with a minimum of fuss and time expenditure. There is a fine balance between security and service. Some statistics suggest that the passengers who are most searched are often the highest paying, a figure that does not bode well for service satisfaction ratings. Vast sums of money are being invested in the security infrastructure of airlines.

Effective, efficient security requires profiling and differentiating both employees and customers. Making material distinctions between people will only be possible with a great deal of information from a variety of sources ”internal, other airlines, other companies, other countries and government agencies. Many companies are starting to hire Chief Security Officers (CSOs) to work on solutions to the problem. Without good information, no solutions are possible.

Governments have work to do on many fronts, security in particular. International information collaboration between governments and within governments can enable international and domestic agencies to effectively track criminals, including terrorists. The bigger the information trail, the more likely it is that criminals will be detected before they commit a crime.

Of course, privacy issues must be addressed simultaneously . Fortunately, protecting the security of personal information is well within the capability of currently available tools and infrastructure. The only obstacle is commitment.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a new federal law that creates security standards to ensure the privacy of patients medical records, has already forced doctors , hospitals , health-care providers, insurance companies and biotechnology companies to shore up their privacy protection. The real creativity and excitement will come in how, once privacy is secured, the vast stores of medical information can be used to advance our understanding of disease and find cures.

Salk Institute

On the medical frontiers at the Salk Institute, Dr. Carolee Barlow s research into brain diseases requires her to analyze an extraordinary amount of data. As scientific instruments have improved, the volume of data has multiplied inordinately. It is now possible for Dr. Barlow to measure exactly how much RNA is generated by each gene in each of the literally trillions of cells in the brain and to derive individual gene expression profiles.

Dr. Barlow s particular field of interest is neurological disorders in human beings. Much of her research has focused on identifying the differences in the gene expression profile of a strain of mouse known to be anxious and a strain of mouse known to be bold and curious . In doing this she hopes to identify the genes associated with crippling anxiety in humans .

To compound the information issue, what interests Dr. Barlow in all this data is not what might interest another neuroscientist working on a different disease. The process of separating signal from noise in all this data yields entirely different results depending on the research focus.

Dr. Barlow compares the nature of her search for answers to the issues a Wal-Mart faces doing market- basket analysis. With the same tools at her disposal that Wal-Mart uses, namely the ability to ask hundreds of unexpected questions of the data, Dr. Barlow is able to work with previously difficult to manage data sets. And the flexibility that enables Dr. Barlow to work with the data allows any doctor to ask questions, even on totally different issues. Both doctors can look at the same information for different purposes and derive extraordinary value.

Progress in the ability to store enormous volumes of information and access it in flexible formats might just be one of the tickets to breaking through new medical frontiers.

 

We re not there yet. But we re heading in the right direction. The project of capitalizing on our information resources is organic. As we move toward our ultimate goal of real-time, perhaps even anticipatory, decision-making, the goalposts move too. There will always be ways in which we can run our companies better, be more competitive and achieve higher growth and profits. Fortunately for us that means our jobs as CEOs and senior executives will be challenging and interesting for a long time to come.

Creativity, ingenuity, vision and common business sense are ever in demand.