August 29, 2008
Fear. Oh, it works...
I came across an interesting thing this morning - over at SANS, there's a brief one-pager about using fear as a sales tactic. Basically, it's a cautionary statement about how fear can backfire and it probably isn't the best way to sell product in the security arena. All of which is absolutely true.
The problem though, is that it's so darn effective. It has to be, since so many of the vendors in security use it. It seems to me kinda like spam - if there weren't some percentage of the population that receive spams and actually buy stuff as a result, then it wouldn't continue. So, people must be responding to the fear. Everyone in this industry uses it - journalists use it to get eyes, vendors use it to get sales, salespeople use it get meetings. So, we know it works.
See... take a look at a few of today's headlines:
The Internet's Biggest Security Hole
Most IT Staff Would Steal Company Secrets
and so forth. Now, neither of these articles would be things I'd classify as FUD per se. In fact, they're both interesting and well-written pieces. But the fact of the matter is that there's a *startle* component that makes us take notice. Does that count as fear? Arguably. And it works.
Should it work? Maybe yes, maybe no. But clearly it does. And we're into our second decade of continued effectiveness. So I'm not sure I buy it that there's much of a backlash going to happen soon.
Posted by Ed at August 29, 2008 09:42 AM | TrackBack