Country Squire station wagon

The Ford Country Squire station wagon is possibly one of the weirdest examples of corporate branding that I have ever encountered.

Our family had one.  We had a lot of cars over the years, and, at one point, latterly, with a fairly large family, we would often have more than one car at a time.  I remember that there was another station wagon that we had at one point, I can't remember what it was.  But we did have a Ford Country Squire station wagon, for a long time, and it was even the car that we had when we took a trip across Canada in Canada's Centennial year.

First of all, there is the issue of the term station wagon, itself.  Before the sport utility vehicle, and before the minivan, the station wagon was the standard American example of the large family car.  But why call it a station wagon?  It certainly has an implication of an agricultural utility vehicle, but really only in Australian parlance.  In the United states, a farm is called a farm or a ranch.  In England it might be called an estate.  But it's only in Australia that a large agricultural spread is referred to as a station.  So why do the Americans refer to a utility vehicle as a station wagon?

And then there is the model name of Country Squire.  There were, of course, other models of station wagon.  Even Ford had other models of station wagon.  But the Country Squire was certainly popular, and possibly the most popular model of station wagon during the station wagon's run as the American family car.  This possibly has to do with the faux wood trim that was added to the sides and rear of the country Squire.  It definitely made it very identifiable.  But why call it a Country Squire?  Yes, I can see the attraction of referring to the country.  A lot of the advertising for such a family vehicle would refer to the ability to travel out into the country for a family vacation, going camping and such.  But why call it a Country *Squire*?  Squire is of course a reference to gentry or minor nobility in Britain.  But it isn't used widely in the United States.  So why brand an American car as a Country Squire?

SF - 3.15.0 - Quality

SF - 3.15.0 - Quality

The whole quality movement probably has to be referred to Walter Deming.

Following the surrender of Japan at the end of the Second World War, the allies wanted to avoid the problems that had followed the surrender of Germany following the First World War.  The fact that Germany was left without assistance, and facing massive war reparations, was certainly a factor in Hitler's rise, the result being the Second World War.  So the allies provided reconstruction aid to Japan following the Second World War.

Walter Deming was a worker from the US Department of Agriculture.  He worked with the Japanese agriculture industry, and particularly in terms of quality control, both in terms of production, and in terms of packing, storing, and distributing of supplies of agricultural products.  His success in this regard caught the attention of other areas of Japanese industry.  He set up training on quality issues for other Japanese industries.  Over the course of a couple of decades, of course, the quality of Japanese goods quality and reliability of Japanese goods reach such heights that they actually threatened American production.  Thus, a couple of decades late, perhaps, American manufacturers and business owners started to realize that they, too, needed to pay attention to quality.

Deming's seminars for American CEOs, which were highly subscribed, didn't just cover quality, but also many issues of management.  One of the points that he made was that Americans, because of their manufacturing success, thought that they knew something about management.  He would point out, in the seminars, that Americans didn't know anything about management on that basis.  They had been on the winning side following a major world war, and therefore, it would have been extremely hard for their businesses not to succeed.

There are a number of different approaches to the quality movement, but they all seem to lead back, at some point, to Walter Deming's ideas.  There is, for example, Total Quality Management, or TQM.  This relies very heavily on the PDCA, or Plan/Do/Check/Act, cycle that Deming instituted.

Six Sigma is another quality movement.  Sigma is a reference to a standard deviation, on the Bell curve.  The point of the Six Sigma movement is to try and improve quality to the extent that there is almost no difference within six standard deviations, and therefore the normal bell curve starts to look more like a spike.

ISO 9000 is the international standard for quality, although, as previously noted, it isn't really the international standard for quality.  It is a standard and structure for discussing how important quality is to you, and what steps you are taking to ensure that your products meet standards of quality and reliability.

Security frameworks (SF) series:

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/06/sf-3120-octave.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/06/security-frameworks-sf-0000-intro-and.html

Next: TBA

SF - 3.12.0 - OCTAVE

SF - 3.12.0 - OCTAVE

OCTAVE is definitely a security framework, since it deals specifically with risk management.  Unfortunately it's rather specialized, since it only deals with risk management.  OCTAVE is actually an acronym, standing for Operationally Critical Threat, Asset, and Vulnerability Evaluation.  It was created by Carnegie Mellon university, who also basically gave us the capability maturity model idea.

It is extremely good at determining risk management.  Unfortunately, it is rather over engineered.  Therefore, it is unlikely that OCTAVE will be useful to your company, unless your company has a minimum of about 5,000 employees.

There is a reduced version, known as Allegro (in keeping with the musical theme), which is probably suitable for small or medium-sized businesses.  For those at the smaller end of the small business range, you probably simply want to go with the plan of getting as many people as you can together, thinking of everything that can possibly go wrong, and then figuring out what you're going to do about it.

Security frameworks (SF) series:

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/06/sf-3090-nist.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/06/security-frameworks-sf-0000-intro-and.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/06/sf-3150-quality.html

Redundant

I saw a t-shirt with the slogan "van life culture."

Isn't that redundant?  Doesn't the phrase "van life" imply life*style*?  And doesn't lifestyle imply culture?  So isn't the T-shirt phrase actually "van culture culture?"

SF - 3.09.0 - NIST

SF - 3.09.0 - NIST

NIST is not a framework, but rather simply a reference to the Computer Security Resource Center (http://csrc.nist.gov) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology of the United States government.

It is a truly valuable resource for anyone involved in information security.  I tell classes that I facilitate in the United States that they should check it out since it is their tax dollars at work.  I tell everyone else that it is available to them, free of charge, and it is not even their tax dollars at work.

One of the factors that makes this both an extraordinary valuable resource, and difficult to describe, is that it is constantly updated.  There are a number of older documents and resources that are available on the site, but most of them get updated or replaced fairly regularly.  I used to recommend a document numbered 800-37.  It was one of the early checklists with, yes, roughly 135 items on it.  Subsequently it was replaced by 800-37 version 2, which was a more principle oriented framework, but, unfortunately, to my way of thinking, was less useful.  Valuable, yes, but not as useful as the original had been.  However, most of the material on this site is very valuable, and it covers an extraordinary range of topics.  One of the areas that it covers is looking at tools in the field of forensics.  I was privileged to hear the presentation by the person who did the research, one time, and the depth and comprehensiveness of his research was truly astounding.  If you know what you are doing, and are in court up against someone who is depending upon evidence gained from a disk image, with this knowledge you can rip their case to shreds.

And all of this is available, at no charge to the user.

Security frameworks (SF) series:

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/06/sf-3060-graphical-management-frameworks.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/06/security-frameworks-sf-0000-intro-and.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/06/sf-3120-octave.html

1443

I just noticed that the previous post is the 1,443rd that I have made on the blog.

I probably unconciously noted the similarity to 144, a gross, a dozen squared.

But I kind of automatically factored it, finding that it was the product of a hundred and eleven times thirteen (and 37x3x13).

(Probably nobody else except me finds this interesting.)

SF - 3.06.0 - Graphical Management Frameworks

SF - 3.06.0 - Management Frameworks

There are a few business and management oriented frameworks which I would like to discuss together.  First because they are primarily business-oriented frameworks, rather than security oriented frameworks, and secondly because all three of them have a graphical component which makes it easier to discuss when they are visible, or displayed in graphical format.

The first that I would like to mention is the Calder-Moir framework.  This is a kind of a two-dimensional breakdown framework, which also appears to have been influenced by the color wheel.  There is a radial breakdown of topics, with an outer radial break down some setting and breakdown of the original topics.  The inner circle is the conceptual breakdown, most suitable for Board level discussions, while a middle layer breaks down further into management topics, while the outermost layer goes into operational detail, and actually points to a number of other frameworks.

Next is the Balanced Scorecard. The Balanced Scorecard is a kind of a breakdown framework, in that it breaks your business down into four different conceptual areas or categories.  For each of these there is a scorecard, given a something of a further breakdown of topic areas within those logic larger topics.  The point of the balance scorecard, and it is a very interesting one, is that once you have assessed your business in these four categories, you concentrate your efforts on the area where the scorecard gives you the lowest score.  This makes a lot of sense.  Once you have found out where you are weakest, shore up that particular area, rather than concentrating your efforts on areas where you do have a more reasonable score already.

Finally, there is the Zachman Framework.  This is last on the list, but definitely by no means least.  The Zachman Framework is very broadly used and highly regarded in both business and security.  Although there is no particular security identification, other than business management, in the Zachman Framework itself, the Zachman Framework has been modified as the Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture, or SABSA framework.

The Zachman Framework is a a breakdown framework.  It forms a two-dimensional grid, where one axis looks at different sizes of business units or contexts within your enterprise, and the other axis generally asks the w5 plus h questions: what, who, why, when, where, and how.  The thing is, that when you think about it, and consider it against the phases of system development or project management, with a little re-arrangement you get a very good match.  This makes a lot of sense in terms of a breakdown structure, and it is unsurprising that SABSA has been a successful security architecture based upon it.  Based upon SABSA, and following the advice of a colleague, I have, myself, use the framework to structure planning tools for both business continuity, and incident response, specifically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa1cMTWyxy8&list=PLUuvftvRsRv7D5PiHIULhhd9M032ej4_i

Security frameworks (SF) series:

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/06/sf-3030-itil.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/06/security-frameworks-sf-0000-intro-and.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/06/sf-3090-nist.html