I’ve been talking a lot with clients lately about security and the Cloud. These issues aren’t new, but something came up in conversation that has been resonating with me for days. As with most interesting ideas, it is pretty simple. The bigger and more well-known your organization is, the higher the likelihood is that someone dislikes you (for whatever reason) and will try to mess with you. This is acutely true in our industry where security is the name of the game and hackers take pride in sticking it to the corporate juggernauts who claim their systems are impenetrable.
A perfect example is the great Sony network hack from earlier this year. Despite the damage to Sony’s credibility, very few people profited from any stolen secrets on this job … it was likely just mischief for the sake of bragging rights. That is often the case with hackers and online saboteurs. It is reasonable to suppose they did it just because Sony is huge and they wanted to prove they could slay a giant. This phenomena raises an interesting paradox: nearly every organization wants to grow and increase their visibility to the public in order to get new clients and customers. However, you may reach a point where the shady characters start to take notice and you become a target.
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PT Barnum: Genius or Con-Man?
Phineas Taylor Barnum was the world’s first show-business millionaire. He could promote and sell anything. He is historically … but erroneously … credited with the following phrase: There’s a sucker born every minute. The self-serving wisdom here is clear enough: there is no shortage of people who are willing to part with their money in exchange for empty promises, miracle potions, smoke, mirrors, and fanfare.
The only thing I dislike more than losing is dishonesty. That’s probably why I don’t like magicians or clowns! Read more…
Another cautionary tale from the cloud. Last Sunday afternoon Google accidentally deleted the Gmail folders of tens of thousands of users. Contact lists were mostly intact, but for most victims, years of saved correspondence was wiped out. Thankfully, they managed to restore most of the deleted mailboxes within a couple days. But imagine if your business correspondence was lost in the blink of an eye. Imagine if that happened and you didn’t even have a phone number to call to ask why, when, and how. Yikes. Read more…
Jason has a line that we like to repeat around the office as often as people will listen … ”trust is a difficult thing to build, and a really easy thing to lose.”
At IT Weapons we’ve cultivated a pretty valuable habit in our team; under-promise and over-deliver. In other words, never commit to more than we’re capable of, and always do a little more than what was expected. We are honest about deadlines, we are honest about costs, and so our team (I think) has become pretty good at managing client expectations accordingly. It takes work to find the balance that fits, but the result is priceless; we have loyal clients who trust us.
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