Re: UKNM: Onffsite Applications - Security and trust

[Sean Phelan]

At 9:49 am +0100 29/7/99, Chetan Damani wrote:


>I am currently doing some work for a telecoms company, and I am more of

>technical security person and they are looking for ideas in the "trust our

>company" field, the company does have a lot of brand, but they want to be

>completely (as close to 100% as possible) secure/trustworthy.

>

>How can we convince people to move there applications offsite. security and

>trust wise..?

>

>e.g A knowledge managment Intranet site hosted and managed by an outsourced

>supplier.

>

>What could you offer that would convince companies that your site(site as in

>real location and people in the site, not a web site) is secure enough and

>you can be trusted..


Interesting question. If you want people to trust you, you need to prove

yourself trustworthy.  Best way is to establish two or three years of

faultless operation and a number of happy customers (it reminds me of one

of the best definitions of high-quality PR: "telling people what you have

done is public relations; telling people what you are going to do is hype").


Of course, the question is how can you convince people to trust you from

day 1?   Most important and practical answer: Service Level Agreements with

clear and unambiguous penalty clauses. And don't, ever, try to wriggle out

of paying up on the penalty clauses.


When BT launched Syncordia, its global network outsourcing service, in 1991

a primary selling point was the service level agreements, with fairly major

penalty clauses.  At the time they were willing to accept liability for

local tail circuits outside the UK provided by other telcos. That was very

innovative at the time, and gained them enormous press coverage and a lot

of credibility.


Of course, if you really, REALLY want to convince people you are trustworthy,

accept contingent liability in your contracts (ie. if the service you provide

goes down, you will compensate the client for loss of revenue and profits,

not just refund a month's fees).


Suggest to your lawyers that you accept contingent liability and their faces

will go ashen, there will be a silence, and they will then patiently explain

to you all the reasons you should not do this.  It is quite fun, if you

enjoy that kind of thing.


Cheers

Sean


=============================================================

Sean Phelan

seanmultimap [dot] com

     http://www.multimap.com

phone (within UK): 0171 433 0460      fax (UK): 0171 209 5194

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