The first global brand
Guiness is more than just a drink, it is a brand. More precisely it is the first modern global brand. Arthur Guiness was selling his Foreign Stout to remote corners of the British Empire long before the Madison Avenue got started. And he did it so successfully that Guiness and stout became synonymous, the first category killer.
So when the 72nd IETF was held in Dublin, the Guiness St James Brewery was the obvious place to hold the social event (courtesy of Alcatel-Lucent). I took the above picture using my iPhone 3G on the way over.
The power of brands is undisputed. Think 'Guiness' and you immediately think 'Ireland', and in many cases the other way round. Its not the beer, its the brand.
So why don't we start to use the power of the brand to enable usable security? When a customer visits their bank branch the bank's brand is on every ATM, every leaflet, every poster, every card they issue and its on a huge sign on the front of the building. The brand is what the consumer trusts, not the bank.
The criminals know this and they use the fact to hjack the bank brand. This is one of the reasons many mail clients and webmail services do not display images from untrusted sources. But shouldn't we be leveraging the power of the brand in SSL, S/MIME and DKIM to establish a positive security indicator that is not just trusted but trustworthy?
