Brave For Free

A group of friends pulled me into an interesting debate. Two events happened a couple of days ago; Starbucks announced a promotion for their hundredth store in India, and iPhone X pre-order sold out within minutes . Hotly debated was the sense in these events - why are people lining up for a coffee that's just a bit cheaper than usual, or a phone that is no longer much of the revolutionary product it once was. There was talk of cheaper CCD coffee and better Samsung phones, of price elasticity, Veblen goods, artificial shortages or just plain moronic behaviour. I felt that all these arguments were wrong. Economists should not be involved; this is really about storytelling. Starbucks has, over the years, gathered a loyal following of people willing to pay high prices for their coffee through a combination of ambience and aspiration. The hundredth-store sale is actually aimed at their regulars, not at new clientele choosing between CCD and Starbucks. It encourages the already comm...

Security is obviously on everyone’s mind these days with the media gleefully broadcasting with unfailing regularity yet another marquee name falling victim to a breach. Much energy goes into discussing the latest attacks and protections and responses, peppered with generous doses of doomsday scenarios. The talk is all of battle, of fighting off the evil hacker enemy. It may not be the losing battle that it looks like at the moment -remember the war against viruses once looked similarly bleak - but its certainly not looking easy. As the great Sun Tsu probably said, the greatest victory is avoiding battle. And even in this cyber-battle, there are a few ways to do that. Tokenize internally Dealing with sensitive information is a necessity, but there are ways to make it less sensitive. The most effective - mask sensitive data at source and keep it masked all the time. We’ve been doing this to passwords for years but have never gone beyond it. If you store sensitive information in the cl...