When I was little, I dreamed of becoming a dentist. A few years later, that dream shifted to becoming a singer. But finally, at the age of 26, God gave me the chance to become a central banker. Yes, not as an economist, but entrusted with a role in governance.
Over the past four years, I’ve experienced so many new things that I never imagined. One of them was being “hacked”—something I usually only hear about in mafia movies. Not at the level of Bong Joon Ho or Martin Scorsese, just your typical Indonesian director that I enjoy watching, haha. Back to the “hack” story: I clearly remember sitting in front of my laptop, doing my usual tasks, preparing documents for the Board Meeting, when suddenly my laptop froze. In about five minutes, all my Microsoft Word document formats had changed. Gone were the familiar “docx” or “pptx” extensions, replaced by five random letters filled with x, y, and z. I thought I was safe since I had backed everything up to my office OneDrive (thanks to automatic syncing). But, surprise! Everything on OneDrive was gone as if it had been swallowed by the earth.
You know what really annoyed me? I had completed four sets of meeting minutes that I hadn’t submitted to my supervisor for review yet. Did I have to start over? Absolutely. What made it challenging was that my notes were also gone. So where was I supposed to begin? Considering that during the Board Meeting, no voice or video recordings were allowed at all. At that moment, I was truly stressed. I wondered whose fault it was. Was it the IT department that failed to maintain our office’s security? Or was it Microsoft’s fault for being so easily hackable? Or was it my fault for trusting this tech stuff too much?
In the end, I started over from scratch with the help of my supervisor who was there with me… aka “what else could I do?”
Organizations that have migrated to cloud-based data storage and collaboration tools must reassess their information security strategies and may find that their on-premises security technologies cannot protect data stored in the cloud (Lang et al., 2023). I completely agree with this. However, it seems my organization has implemented some effective measures, as we haven’t experienced any ransomware attacks in the past three years (let’s hope it stays that way). One of the steps being implemented is the use of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) whenever employees log into their Microsoft 365 accounts. Unfortunately, some boomers still protest this, seeing it as just an added burden to their workload.
From what I’ve read, many cloud providers now support Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to classify and control various data, and they offer “always-on encryption” through Information Rights Management (IRM), which governs what authorized users can do and prevents all files from being stolen without a valid login. Vendors are currently developing sophisticated integrated approaches, called Extended Detection and Response (XDR).
Perhaps these reflections provide some context for why I chose data management as the topic for my KIPP project. I believe many organizations, especially in Indonesia, overlook the importance of data management, which is foundational to institutional governance. Recently, Indonesia was shocked by a ministry that failed to back up data containing personal information of its citizens. This question sparked my curiosity during our Future Governance class.
The “what-if” scenarios commonly used in fiction, particularly science fiction, serve as tools to explore new ideas while disregarding current realities (Dunne and Raby, 2023). This notion seems to fuel my desire to delve deeper into this topic. I hope that through my daily reflections on this blog, I can progressively share the research process regarding data management in organizations.
Alright, it’s time to scroll back through Twitter to find some more inspiration. Besides checking out the news about Liam Payne’s passing, I need a breather from Google Scholar, my bestie.
Reference:
Michael Lang, Lena Connolly, Paul Taylor, and Phillip J. Corner. 2023. The Evolving Menace of Ransomware: A Comparative Analysis of Pre-pandemic and Mid-pandemic Attacks. Digital Threats 4, 4, Article 52 (December 2023), 22 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3558006
DUNNE, A., & RABY, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. The MIT Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qf7j7
Meera
Nadia, its fantastic to read the backstory to how you arrived at your KIPP project. Excited to read more as you develop your project!