Security Pie

My friend Zvika (all names are fictional to protect the innocent) drew my attention to Peter Bregman post on Harvard Business blog Why Small Companies Will Win in This Economy. Peter is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and advises CEOs and their leadership teams. My friend Zvika is an executive in a small company and knows one or two things about selling “against the big guys”.

I read this article and find it to be interesting for multiple reasons:

1. Peter tells a nice story about Passlogix. I like stories. 
2. I second Peter’s thoughts. Customers buy from someone they trust. It does not matter if you work in a big company or a small company. In order to sell, you should gain your customers trust.
3. I was amused that Peter found the mentioned phenomenon interesting. 

Did you ever think why customers buy? why do YOU buy? I always find it awkward when I hear experts talk teach about the art (or science) of selling, but they do not teach why customers buy.  IMO, a customer or a prospect will trust their sales rep if he and the company that he represents are professional, reliable, accurate and will be there when needed. Day or night.  Sun or rain. 

Many years ago, when I sold our first major (at the time) project, I looked at my prospect eyes and told him something along the following lines:

 Believe me… we know what we are doing, you are not the second or third customer for this kind of project

He knew that he was the first, but he trusted us..

 Marc Boroditsky is the president, CEO and a co-founder of Passlogix . He is passionate about his company and will always answer the phone. Companies should have passionate executives at all levels. I wish Mr. Boroditsky (I do not know him) all the best. Such success stories make my day. Learning from my own experience, one day he could not answer the phone for every customer. But then, he must have other executives with the same level of passion that will.

Assaf  adds:  He concludes with “small is the new big”. Maybe the correct line is “Big is the new small?”.

So I have recently been using a MacBook Pro (2006-2007 version) and have come to grapple with the advantages and disadvantages of Apple. Interestingly, the same types of concerns span the entirety of the Apple line of products (Ipods, Iphones, Mac books, Macs – I rarely use Mac Software so I don’t know if this is similar for their software).

Apple, IMHO, is a great device for non technical users. Apple technology is the closest approximation to an appliancized computer (think “washing machines” and “laptops”). It does what it does relatively well. But it comes at a cost: no hardware freedom. What does this mean? Well, Washing machines have lifespans of 10 years or so. For Apple appliances it seems to be 2 years (new Iphone, new Ipod, New Macbook Pro).

The accepted diatribe about this issue is that Apple provides better service than Microsoft: Say what?

On any Abit/Thinkpad/Dell (read PC) while true that hardware support comes from hardware vendors, it is mostly there. Unless the vendor goes belly up, there are drivers usually developed for quite a few years after the delivery of the hardware. Not so for Apple. Sure – it is a one stop shop – but service doesn’t exists.

(BTW – I am pretty certain that many people assume Apple provides service are the sharp ads on TV with a cool “Mac Guy” and a “Plump PC guy”. Well these ads are indeed very deceiving.)

As an example: Macbook Pro uses the Intel ICH 7M AHCI SATA II controller, which supports native command queing and 3Gb transfers. Nice hardware – right? Well yes for the marketing department, but not for the user. To enable the AHCI mode, the Intel option BIOS has to be installed. Apple does not support the option BIOS so users are stuck in IDE mode.

So much for good hardware which is – supposedly – faster than a PC. Well, it isn’t.

Built in obsolence (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence), as in using high end components but preventing their usage is a complete turn-off for me, so this will be the last Apple for me.  

/Assaf

I want to be free of accountability. I want to be Dick Fuld. I want to be Visa. I want to be Moody’s. I want to be Fair Isaacs. I want to take other people money and have no responsibility. I want to be Ken Lewis. I want to be American Express. I want to give dead beats other people’s money and make a profit. I want to suck the American people dry. I want to be Fannie Mae. I want to be John Thain. I want a million dollar office. I want to capitalize on other’s misfortunes. I want to makeoff with the savings of others. I want to be Freddie Mac. I want to be AIG. I want to be ignorant. I want to claim innocence. I want to be Mastercard. I want to print in fine letters a deal with the devil. I want you all to be subjects. I want to own FICO. I want to own your future. I want to be Experian. I want to be Trans Union. I want to be Washington Mutual. I want to fire my employees. I want to be Equifax. I want no responsibility. I want rewards. I want to be RBS. I want to create derivatives that will hide deadbeats in a cloak of A+’s. I want to be Bear Sterns. I want to be Lehman. I want to be the dollar bill. With not a care in the world. I want to be standard but not poor. I want to be Morgan Stanley. I want to be Goldman Sachs. I want to be Citibank. I want to be a collateralized debt obligation. I want to have the term debt in my name. I want to be an asset. I want to be Nationwide. I want to be bought by Ken.  I want to be Society Generale. I want to be Rick Wagoner. I want to be an American car maker. I want to be Hank Paulson. I want to waterboard prisoners. I want to be Alan Fishman. I want to be Edward Liddy. I want to be…

Who me? Nah. I just want to take advantage of the upcoming bubble. Whatever it may be.

So I like it when I can take the learnings of one field and apply it to another. When we started PortAuthority, it was clear to me that data security was important. I came from the defense industry which (for the most part) values data security more than it does systems – and for good reason: if enemies get access to confidential data, it is a very short while to losing military superiority.

However, I was disappointed and somewhat frustrated to learn that at the time (2000-2003) little thought was given by corporations to data security. Words to that effect were used, but the majority of security was dedicated to the A(vailability) in CIA and some were dedicated to the I(ntegrity). Very little (with a few exceptions) were dedicated to the C(onfidentlity).

As it turns out, what was missing was knowhow. This knowhow which is rampant across DOD corridors, was virtually non-existant in the corporate world. And the few that did understand the concepts were ex-defense employees.

So the knowhow for data security is now being built, and ever more security folk get up in the morning and say “how do I help enhance our competitive standing in the industry” vs. “how do I ensure I don’t get to clean up all the machines over the weekend”.

So – what is in this knowhow? Well, to me it appears that the knowhow consists of knowledge (theories), experience (past experiences, witnessing others, reading case studies), and language (how do I communicate to all parties involved in the activities). Or – as I will explain later – the common memories in the field (similar to the so called “muscle memory” in the organization).

Well here’s to the topic at hand: food, ”foodies” and what makes a great dish “great”.

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We have people with keen enough an eye and an ear to detect these pigeons. Trained as they are, they sit in pairs in the highest tower of your castle, ever watching for pigeons. Not all pigeons, your majesty, only what we call “egress” pigeons, who fly in a direction clearly meant to depart your kingdom. Targeting only “egress” pigeons is easier because it saves on the drugged arrows they use to fell them.

Then once a pigeon is felled, the trained hounds are released. These specially trained hounds find the pigeon and bring it back into your castle unharmed and intact. Then, the pigeon is take to a special room where it is left to recover the effect of the drug. If the message carries the royal seal, which only your majesty wears, then it is reattached to the pigeon and sent – while a cryptologist reads the rest of the messages and deliver it to your majesty after it has been duly decoded.

After you get to trust our cryptologists, you may order them to perform an action on your behest your majesty, for example, to burn the message so it never reaches its destination, or to send it unharmed, based on its content. Some messages may not be of interest to your majesty, and may be taken to one of your trusted viziers for consultation to await their decision, so your majesty may be free to rule the kingdom. Others may be delivered to your majesty directly, while others may just be copied verbatim and saved for later reference.