Diversions | Branden R. Williams, Business Security Specialist

Will Plastc Succeed where Coin Failed? standard

Facebook has some really interesting ways to position products in front of its users. Not one day after a few of us went on a Coin rant I was presented an advertisement for Plastc, a bigger and better version of Coin that includes an EMV Chip. Early adopters of Coin had mixed results with the card itself with some merchants refusing to accept it, and current users are struggling with the lack of chip support in the device. Here’s why Coin will slowly be phased out in a way to be completely ineffective. Embedded in the magnetic stripe of your payment card is a collection of data that is submitted for payment when you swipe the card. One of the ...

What AirBnB and HomeAway Need is Loyalty standard

Before we delve into the topic, you may have noticed me being somewhat absent the last few months. There was a reason for that. Now that the quiet period is over, I can write a little bit more. It’s been an interesting ride to see an IPO from this side. Expect lots more excitement to come! Now, that said, I had the opportunity to do the AirBnB thing a couple of times this year. This is a great model for taking advantage of excess housing supply and is turning out to be quite disruptive to the hospitality space. Like Uber and Lyft for taxi-like services, AirBnB is marrying up property owners with extra space with travelers who need a place to stay. My ...

Still Confusion in the Ranks standard

Just a short one for you guys today. Go take a look at the diss-fest happening in the public eye here between a couple of prominent organizations around policy making for electronic payments. Credit Union National Association talking points for some of the pains around breaches. NACS rebuttal and fact checking. Even the big guys get confused sometimes. It’s a complex world out there. Possibly Related Posts: pgMail 1.5 Released! Let’s Encrypt for non-webservers When Man Pages Go Weird Aviation Apps I Use Sellers Buying 5-Star Amazon Reviews

CurrentC, Off to a Rough Start standard

Last week we saw a flurry of announcements around CurrentC, a merchant-driven alternative payment scheme that is designed to cut the costs from electronic payment processing. Sure, they didn’t demonstrate a great approach to security with the notification of their breach last week, but no payment information was put at risk. CurrentC is designed to work in a similar manner as Apple Pay (enabled by a smartphone), but it platform independent and works using QR-codes to transact business. Essentially, any merchant with a scanner that can read a QR-code would theoretically be able to accept this form of payment. That brings in grocery stores and big-box retail for sure as most use some kind of scanning technology to assist in ...

The Role of Evidence-Based Management standard

Evidence-Based Management (EBMgt) is a topic growing in popularity in both the academic and professional worlds for a number of reasons. We’ve never had access to the volume of data that we do today coupled with the processing power available to make sense of it. In addition, we’ve learned that while hunches give us a gut feel we are comfortable with, we like to confirm it with data (which can be challenging when coping with Confirmation Bias). One of the bigger lessons you learn when you continue past a Masters degree is that your opinion doesn’t matter. Everything you write about should be evidence based. Synthesis is great and a critical step in Bloom’s Taxonomy—meaning it is just fine to ...

There Are No Unicorns standard

Those of you in the DevOps community know exactly who I am talking about when I use the term Unicorn. Amazon, Netflix, and Disney all come to mind. After two days here at the DevOps Enterprise Summit, we shouldn’t be using the term unicorn at all to describe these high-performing IT organizations. If we have to choose four-legged animal, they are more like a thoroughbred than a unicorn. Here’s why. When trying to strategically position a firm in the marketplace, scholars like to use Resource-Based Theory (sometimes called the Resource-Based View of the Firm), largely popularized in recent literature by Jay Barney. His seminal paper in 1991 is frequently cited when trying to understand why one firm has competitive advantage ...

Apple Pay is Here, First Notes standard

12:01 hits and I hit my Software Update menu item to see if I can snag me some Apple Pay, and BAM! There it is! 20 minutes later, I am ready to go with iOS 8.1. Here are a few notes for those of you who may be using it as well. Apple Pay is a part of Passbook, and acts like any other Passbook integration. You can open Passbook and add ONE card, but any additional cards must be added under Settings -> Passbook & Apple Pay. For each card that is enrolled, you may be asked to validate your identity. Make sure that your banks have current email addresses and phone numbers for you. They will send you ...

Consider the Hawthorne Effect for Big Data standard

The Hawthorne Effect is a term coined to explain inconclusive results from a set of studies performed at Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works on worker productivity from the 1920s and 30s. Essentially, researchers were confused with the productivity results from two specific parts of the study—changes in illumination levels and worker break time—which improved productivity only during the study. Workers knew they were being studied, thus improved productivity regardless of the changes implemented by the researchers. The Hawthorne Effect is used to describe positive results from research as influenced by the workers, not by the actual independent variables studied. Researchers today now work to reduce this effect through a number of ways, but it is still a tricky process. The ...

Corporate Survival Tips for Young Professionals: The Roundup standard

Well, it’s been quite a journey over the last month or so! I hope that some of the things presented here are helpful. I’m happy if just one tip makes a change in your career! During my research for this series I found TONS of other bloggers who have posted information about some of these skills (many around politics and politically charged environments). I would encourage you to find more information on your own to further your skills. As a suggested starting place, check out this blog post by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman titled, The Skills Leaders Need at Every Level. If you need a quick reference to ALL of the posts in this series, use this link. Possibly ...

Corporate Survival Tips for Young Professionals: Presenting standard

For the final post (for now) in this series, I wanted to take a moment to discuss presenting. At some point in your career you will need to present something to a group of colleagues, industry peers, or superiors. For those of you who are already suffering from nausea and dry mouth, the worst part is that you might be caught in a Catch 22—skipping or bombing that presentation could be career limiting. I’ve been presenting in some form or another fairly regularly for a little over ten years. I still get nervous. In fact, I typically don’t really get into the groove until the audience does something to reinforce what I am talking about. It could be a laugh ...

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