Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1463464
APRIL 2022 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 47 some of the design prep and production engi- neering are all very front loaded. When I look at the distribution of labor on a timeline for a particular job, the opportunities to better mit- igate risk are all front loaded in the sense that we can make some decisions early on as a man- ufacturer of how much of our customer's data we choose to flow into production. ere are always opportunities to produce against lim- ited datasets or even modify datasets that don't affect the integrity of the data but do obfuscate or mask the end customer that the production job is for. ere are a lot of opportunities to think about using synthetic data in production or limited datasets in production, things that buy down the risk of that data being compromised in a production environment and really prac- ticing something that we call non-persistence, where the data that we receive from custom- ers, which is the complete picture, doesn't stay in our environment any longer than it must. Johnson: A few moments ago, were you imply- ing that participants in manufacturing can help influence the regulations that the government puts forward? Bonner: ere are opportunities to influence what goes into regulation. However, manu- facturing usually waits to engage with regula- tors aer the law has already been proposed or passed and then we're into enforcement. We do a lot of work in defense contracting right now and we see a lot of industry groups rallying to control the costs of compliance for certain cybersecurity measures that are now required of defense contractors. Here's the thing: ey've already been baked into law. ere are already executive orders and contract clauses in place. e ship has sailed. You're not getting those horses back into the barn. Your best bet would've been to influence legislators and reg- ulators upstream. e credit card industry is a good example of that. If you've ever had to take a credit card in your business, you know about an indus- try standard called PCI compliance or PCI DSS. ere's no government involvement. e credit card companies themselves created that standard and enforce it through the banks to stave off regulation. When there were discus- sions about how we prevent credit card the and fraud, the industry decided to step up and build its own standard that was better than any- thing currently available. It removed the need for regulators who create blanket policies and legislation. at is an example of industry getting ahead of something when it sees a pattern emerging. If manufacturers in the printed circuit board industry want to stave off the next round of regulation, they need to create better manu- facturing-oriented standards and then use that to educate up into the regulatory space. It's a multi-year process that requires vision. Johnson: If the banking industry can find ways to cooperate on exchanging data, then what the heck is the printed circuit board industry waiting for? Bonner: I see efforts by organizations like IPC trying to build some new additional standards for some of the things they do. You could easily pivot some of those efforts into best practices for adapting and adopting connected technol- ogies on the shop floor for specific methodolo- gies that minimize the impact level of data used in production. ere are all sorts of things that could be created, but you're right, it needs to start sooner rather than later so that when the regulators start making reactive knee-jerk accu- sations of the entire industry, the industry has something to show for it and say it's been work- ing on these topics. We've already been imple- menting best practices, and we're going beyond just reactive-only responses to regulation. Johnson: What a great interview. Bonner: ank you. SMT007