EIM Sensor’s Mark Judson explains best practices for data security
Cybersecurity is a real threat, whether you’re a Fortune 1000 company or government agency – the ability to secure your data is paramount, no matter what. Unfortunately, all you have to do is follow the news and you will find that just about every agency has failed with regards to securing information, said EIM Sensor CEO and Founder Mark Judson in an interview with ITWatchIT.
Several mandates have come out from the Administration regarding migration to the cloud, storing email files, and applying metadata. These legislative policies largely left out cybersecurity from the directives. There has been a swift change in the ability to modernize the flow of information, but security has mostly been an afterthought. Today, much of the information that is being distributed across the government and within many organizations is highly compromisable. We partner with companies that have a rich infrastructure in place where we can actually capture corporate information and put them in a secure cloud environment.
IT Consulting
Every large organization has their current state and their desired state, where they would like to reach, all driven by the organization’s mission/vision. We bring in a team of solution architects that will help organizations understand their current state of operation, business system, how information is being garnered, systems records they can use to support decision-making and operations, and how we can use our tools and technology to make things more efficient. In doing so, we explore everything from automation to the incorporation of new technology that can process data more efficiently.
Sensors
We have a product called EIM FileMap which is geared to change the way that enterprise information is managed within the business community today. Sensors have been an important part of our company throughout its history. We got our start working under a research grant from NASA. We deployed a network of buoys off the Florida coast after the 2010 BP oil spill, which were used to collect data related to the effect the oil spill on the water quality.
We relayed the information back and combined it with other data sets collected from public health officials and other remote monitoring institutions. From there, we provided a precision platform where rich analytics was provided to decision makers to nowcast the likelihood of different water quality conditions being present within areas of interest.
We have also taken sensor technology to the next level by incorporating RFID into our information management platform to enable us know where a particular file or asset is at any given time.
Sensors and IoT
The internet of things has been a driving force in the development of the next generation of applications. Today’s decision-makers – whether you’re working within a contract manufacturing organization or warehouse – need to know what the state of the inventory. They need to know the assets in stock and basically have a 360-degree perspective of their business operation.
Humans are intelligent—they can apply thought processes and reasoning, but we rely on machines because they improve efficiency and have demonstrated that you can improve production lines through automation. The automation of basic processes and being able to apply technology and sensors to each depth in the work flow is what the internet of things is all about.
For instance, in quality control, it allows us to use sensors and other technologies to guide us through the process, with automated updates and statuses. It is a huge enabler to the future of business.
EIM FileMap
The reason we built EIM FileMap stems from the challenges and struggles that exist in many companies, including the Fortune 1000 companies. Today, capability maturity is one of the themes that every business stands upon, and having a repeatable process in place is another.
Having a repeatable process or mature organization requires having a solid enterprise information management within an organization. Sadly, too many organizations rely on tools, such as Microsoft Sharepoint, that were not necessarily intended to handle enterprise information.
It’s more of a tool that has morphed into a tool that can do everything, and anyone that has used Sharepoint knows that there is much that can be accomplished from a savvy Sharepoint administrative team. It often fails when it comes to customization, and being able to adapt to the business of the client.
Microsoft also has limitations in terms of product support. They don’t necessarily have a dedicated support team in place. Where we really try to excel is in the area of developing custom-built solutions for our clientele. So it’s a choice of buying a suite off-the-rack, or having a suite custom-built for the organization.
Our software was designed to be easily tailored to the unique challenges of any given organization without requiring a high level of technical competency to configure. For instance, a business owner who has some business acumen but is not necessarily an expert in technology, can set up and configure our tool set, then apply it to make their business run more efficiently.
Typical Clients
Our initial growth was in the Fortune 1000 commercial space, and the healthcare/life science communities. These are the industries that rely on decision analytics, have a large amount of data and are also very highly regulated. They have reporting requirements and legislative demands to be able to track and trace their business from inception to fulfillment. They also need to understand their client base and expand into other regions.
Not every organization is mature enough to really leverage this technology today, but in the next few years, it won’t be limited to industries like aerospace or healthcare, since it will be able to help just about any business to accelerate and improve upon their business model.
Federal Space
We’ve worked with several federal agencies, including NASA and the Department of Defense. We helped the Marine Corp facilitate a geospatial program in Japan for three years. Our technology capabilities have been used for anything from oil spill mitigation to environmental control systems, tracking and planning for ordinance.
EIM Sensors has also helped the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers with environmental strategies for developing new military bases, and to facilitate existing expansion plans within bases. Beyond that, we’ve also helped organizations such as the Federal Bureau of Prisons to build new prison facilities, and assisted the Department of Treasury come up with portal technologies to help mitigate financial crime. They have better insights into mining of financial data that is captured by the Treasury.
We’ve also done work with other agencies that manage large quantities of records, to enable them facilitate asset tracking and records management from a policy and FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) perspective.
Healthcare/Life Sciences
The life science industry is particularly heavily legislated, and there is a major push for the pharmaceutical industry to be able to track and trace products from the point of manufacture to the endpoint where it is sold as pharmaceutical by stores like Rite Aid and CVS.
The real challenge today is that many of the pharmaceutical companies do not have a mature method of tracking pharmaceutical products from the point of manufacture, to the packaging, delivery and fulfillment. They are exploring different technologies and methods of integrating with financial systems, often using SAP, and they have tried using different barcoding technologies, some of which have proven to be inadequate. Barcodes are quite easy to counterfeit.
The RFID sensor technology where you can have labels and packaging with RFID inlays, combined with the barcoding helps to prevent the counterfeiting of pharmaceutical products, and also ensures that the products being sold in the retail outlets are actually genuine products.
This also helps with returns, because if you have an RMA (Return Material Authorization), you’re able to authenticate that the product being returned is a genuine product. As we become a more global economy, this is something that will help organizations with packaging and distribution points around the globe. You need to be able to ensure that the products that are being received at the endpoints are indeed original products.
It is a real concern in the pharmaceutical space, and we are looking to see our EIM FileMap product become one of the tools that can become an authentication point to map from the point of manufacture to delivery. Being able to map a product throughout the supply chain is something that very few companies are able to do effectively today.
Profile
Speaker: Mark Judson
Mark Judson is founder and CEO of EIM Sensor. Mr. Judson brings 20 years of experience in the development of cutting-edge applications in satellite technology, sustainability planning, and geospatial mapping. Prior to founding EIM in 2006, Mr. Judson held key positions in high profile projects at ORBIMAGE, Nextel Communications, and Hogan & Hartson. Mr. Judson additionally completed a three-year stint for the Department of Defense, providing technical consulting to military health care at the Tricare Europe office in Germany for EDS. Mr. Judson holds a B.A in International Studies from George Mason University. He is fluent in Japanese.
About EIM Sensor
EIM Sensor provides businesses and organizations with solutions for analyzing, interacting with, and navigating their operating environments. Their service offerings are threefold; each one adapted through proven Enterprise Architecture (EA) methods to be uniquely compatible with a multitude of information networks while also low-cost and easy to use. Enterprise Information Management (EIM). Their EIM FileMap team specializes in improving efficiency,reducing cost and achieving records compliance objectives. Specializing in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) they offer innovative solutions to effectively preserve and manage physical and electronic records.
