Category Archives: Uncategorized

When Can Cybersecurity Professionals “Wing It”?

In my career, I’ve experienced all levels of process maturity, ranging from “process for process’ sake” to “winging it.”

  • Many, many years before Marie Kondo popularized the term “spark joy,” one of my former employers shut down the entire office for the afternoon so that we could spend that time cleaning up. Thankfully this was not instituted (institutionalized?) as a weekly occurrence.
  • On the other extreme, some organizations resist process and just wing it. To the point that I literally hide when I use a process.

Now the ability to “wing it” can be used in some circumstances but not in others. Obviously improvisational comedians “wing it” by definition. But Ike (pre-matrix) couldn’t have used the “wing it” approach on D-Day.

What about cybersecurity? Can you “wing it” when you’re attacked?

Jack Freund says no:

The evolving threat landscape demands robust governance architectures and well-defined board duties to ensure resilience against cyberthreats. Effective cybergovernance not only protects an organization’s digital assets but also reinforces trust among stakeholders. 

Governance is a critical component of cybersecurity, if for no other reason than to prove that your organization actually HAS cybersecurity. Ideally an organization will govern its cybersecurity by some type of “maturity model.”

And that’s more than refraining from calling someone a poopy head.

(AI image from Imagen 3)

Anyone Interested in Tax Fraud?

Anyone interested in tax fraud—a true financial identity challenge that is timely right about now?

authID recently shared a link to an Identity Week article on the topic, “Americans express concern about their personal data in tax fraud.” The article addressed findings from Allstate Identity Protection.

“40% of cases where Allstate restored identity protection were reported during the tax season.”

Granted that this is a skewed number, because tax season is 2 1/2 months long, and not all identity fraud during the period has to do with tax filings. But there does appear to be an uptick.

And Allstate isn’t the only organization providing an anti-fraud solution. The aforementioned authID has a solution of its own:

“Our multi-layered biometric authentication technology provides the security needed to protect sensitive financial transactions with one-in-one-billion false-match accuracy and lightning-fast processing speeds. Our innovative PrivacyKey™ technology eliminates biometric data storage risks, helping financial institutions implement robust identity safeguards during high-risk periods like tax season.”

(Hands holding 1040 form AI picture from Imagen 3)

NPEs and Emotions

When I introduced emotions as the seventh question in Bredemarket’s seven questions, I was thinking about how a piece of content could invoke a variety of emotions in a human reader.

Oh, John, your thinking is so limited.

In a piece in Freethink, Kevin Kelly discussed emotions…in non-person entities (NPEs).

“Like anything else, I think in some cases robots with emotions will be really good. It’s good in the sense that emotions are one of the best human interfaces. If you want to interface with us humans, we respond to emotions, and so having an emotional component in robots is a very smart, powerful way to help us work with them.”

More here.

MFB = Multi Factor Biasification?

There’s a paper from Itiel Dror that I need to read. Its title is “Biased and Biasing: The Hidden Bias Cascade and Bias Snowball Effects.”

Here is a portion of the abstract:

“Cognitive bias…impacts each and every aspect of the justice and legal systems, from the initial engagement of police officers attending the crime scene, through the forensic examination, and all the way to the final outcome of the jurors’ verdict and the judges’ sentencing. It impacts not only the subjective elements in the justice and legal systems but also the more objective scientific elements, such as forensic fingerprinting and DNA….[S]uch errors in the final outcome rarely occur because they require that the shortcomings in each element be coordinated and aligned with the other elements. However, in the justice and legal systems, the different elements are not independent; they are coordinated and mutually support and bias each other, creating and enabling hidden bias cascade and bias snowball effects.”

Secretly Using WOMBAT for Positive Impact

We create things for maximum impact. But is the impact positive or negative?

Move fast and break things

In 2019, Hemant Taneja wrote the following in a Harvard Business Review article, “The Era of ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ Is Over”:

“The technologies of tomorrow—genomics, blockchain, drones, AR/VR, 3D printing—will impact lives to an extent that will dwarf that of the technologies of the past ten years.”

Although not mentioned in the sentence above, Taneja subsequently references artificial intelligence—not as a technology, but as an underpinning of the others.

And the overall theme of the piece is a questioning of what all these things DO—and that it may not be good to break things. Destroying society may have an impact, but it’s a negative one. Can anyone think of any recent examples?

Which leads to keeping processes secret. But not all of them.

Bredemarket’s not-so-secret process

If you’ve ever read my CPA page, you may have noticed the phrase “before I write a word.”

Perhaps that’s the point where some people stopped reading the page. After all, Bredemarket provides writing services. Write stuff! Don’t wait.

And I do write stuff, creating a draft 0.5, sleeping on it, and only then creating a draft 1.

But there’s something that I do even before my draft 0.5.

“Before I write a word, I work with you to make sure that I understand your needs. I start by asking seven important questions. This ensures the best possible deliverable.”

In case you’re curious about those seven questions, you can read about them here. These questions certainly aren’t so secret, since I’ve talked about them for a long time. (There used to be six.)

But there’s something I’ve learned not to talk about.

Bredemarket’s secret process

I don’t want to reveal Bredemarket’s secret process, so I’m just going to call it WOMBAT. Not that WOMBAT is unique to Bredemarket; far from it. Many companies use WOMBAT.

And many companies don’t use WOMBAT. In fact, they abhor WOMBAT and call it stifling. (Emotion words. Geddit?)

But I’ve found over the years that if you don’t use WOMBAT, there’s a very good chance that you’ll break things.

And who catches hell? The consultant. “Why did you do what we asked you to do? Now look at the mess you made!”

So out of a sense of fear and self-preservation (geddit?), there are times that I’ve secretly used WOMBAT and not told my clients I’m doing it.

Because it helps my clients make an impact.

A positive one.

(Imagen 3)

Upland California Amazon Fresh Opening May 1

Finally.

Amazon Fresh, April 6, 2025.

Oh, and they’re hiring. Sort of.

Work Address: 235 E. Foothill Blvd, Upland, CA, 91786  

Pay Rate: $17.80 per hour

Availability Requirements: Shift availability is dependent on operational needs.

Part-time: Shift availability required 3 days per week, including Saturday and Sunday

Flex-time: Must be available 2 weekdays between Monday-Friday and 1 weekend day/evening between Saturday-Sunday. May be scheduled up to 8 hours weekly, with additional shifts offered based on store availability.

Shifts are between 4 a.m. and 12 a.m. and may be up to 8 hours long

On Comment Cards

How do you elicit feedback from your customers? Pop-ups on your website? Emails?

Well, back when dinosaurs roamed the planet, none of these methods was available.

So you had to resort to other methods.

Corporate comedian Jan McInnis likes to share stories of her early days in comedy, when she was working comedy clubs instead of corporate conventions. Comedy clubs feature several comedians a night, and some do better than others.

And sometimes the same comedian gets different reactions from different audiences.

McInnis was once booked at a club for a week. The club owner was there for the first show, which went great. The owner went on a trip, and as McInnis relates in detail, she bombed for the next several shows. Afterwards, the club owner returned and asked how the week went.

“My first thought was to say the shows were fine and pretend that I didn’t notice the silent stares from 7 separate audiences….BUT I knew she’d see the comment cards and then know that I was not only a terrible comic, but a liar.”

Ah, those pesky comment cards, the dinosaur era version of Google Forms or Adobe Experience Manager Forms. (Gotta promote my favorite AEM consultant. But I digress.)

I won’t give away how McInnis answered the question (read about it here), but I will say that honesty is (usually) the best policy.

But regardless of how you survey your customers, the very act of doing so provides you with important knowledge. Not just data—knowledge.

(Bombing wildebeest comedian from Imagen 3)