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Advocating for safer things: On the road, in the home, in business, everywhere

Think about alarm systems in cars. By default, many automobiles don’t come with an alarm system installed from the factory. That was for three main reasons: It lowered the base sticker price on the car; created a lucrative up-sell opportunity; and allowed for variations on alarms to suit local regulations.

My old 2004 BMW 3-series convertible (E46), for example, came pre-wired for an alarm. All the dealer had to do, upon request (and payment of $$$) was install a couple of sensors and activate the alarm in the car’s firmware. Voilà! Instant protection. Third-party auto supply houses and garages, too, were delighted that the car didn’t include the alarm, since that made it easier to sell one to worried customers, along with a great deal on a color-changing stereo head unit, megawatt amplifier and earth-shattering sub-woofer.

Let’s move from cars to cybersecurity. The dangers are real, and as an industry, it’s in our best interest to solve this problem, not by sticking our head in the sand, not by selling aftermarket products, but by a two-fold approach: 1) encouraging companies to make more secure products; and 2) encouraging customers to upgrade or replace vulnerable products — even if there’s not a dollar, pound, euro, yen or renminbi of profit in it for us:

  • If you’re a security hardware, software, or service company, the problem of malicious bits traveling over broadband, wireless and the Internet backbone is also not your problem. Rather, it’s an opportunity to sell products. Hurray for one-time sales, double hurray for recurring subscriptions.
  • If you’re a carrier, the argument goes, all you care about is the packets, and the reliability of your network. The service level agreement provided to consumers and enterprises talks about guaranteed bandwidth, up-time availability, and time to recover from failures; it certainly doesn’t promise that devices connected to your service will be free of malware or safe from hacking. Let customers buy firewalls and endpoint protection – and hey, if we offer that as a service, that’s a money-making opportunity.

Read more about this subject in my latest article for Pipeline Magazine, “An Advocate for Safer Things.”