The Joeism Blog » Technology

How To Be More Secure With Your Data

Joe Colopy — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:36:24 +0000

To follow-up on last week’s security post, Email Service Providers like Bronto need be vigilant about security and act like the banks of the new millenium — banks of personal information with email addresses increasingly being the new currency.

Of course, if you walk through city streets with your wallet hanging out, a secure bank is not going to help you very much. Here are some thoughts on what you can do to keep your email and customer lists more secure:

Think about what you are storing. Customers’ contact lists often contain much more than email addresses. Be aware of what data you are storing on whatever email marketing platform you are using — in particular, avoid including very sensitive pieces of data like credit card numbers and social security numbers for your contacts.
Protect and rotate your password. Most intrusions happen through the first door versus technical back doors. Your password is often the front door key so it is best to have a “strong” password and change it periodically. Strike the balance of it not being so hard to remember that you have to scribble it on a sticky note that sits on your desk. That’s not secure either.
Control access. Every account at Bronto includes multiple users — use them. And, when some one no longer needs access, delete it. Shared user accounts and passwords are inherently insecure and a cause for break-ins.

This is all common sense that sadly isn’t common enough. Bronto has a full suite of security features to make these type of things easy to do. Read this post on Brontoversity to learn how.

Phishing and Key Logging

Now, here’s the tricky one that you probably didn’t think of but has been the reason behind some recent data thefts. This really happens so read this one carefully.

The intruder sends you a phishing email trying to lure you into downloading a computer virus. The virus is a key logger. The key logger runs in the background and secretly logs and sends every key to the intruder. Then the intruder simply listens for your username and password and then tries the combination themselves. Https and other secure connections won’t help you here because your typing is captured before your information is encrypted and sent along to connected website. Then the intruder goes in through the “front door” by signing into your account with your username and password and takes what they would like.

In addition to the suggestions above, I recommend the following to mitigate the risk from phishing / key logging break-ins:

Be aware of phishing emails and what you download from them.
Install and maintain current anti-virus software. Anti-virus software will monitor your system for common key loggers.
Limit the IP addresses that can access your account to your office’s IP address. Will this be inconvenient when you try to sign into your account from home or on the road? Yes but a secure office would have a VPN to let you securely access the Internet through your work network. Read the Network Access section of this post to learn about how to do this in Bronto.

Ultimately secure data is a journey and not a destination — you are never a 100% there and the effort to keep your data secure never ends. But, there is a lot in your control to make your data more secure and exponentially more difficult to steal.

Email Service Providers are the New Banks

Email Service Providers are the New Banks

Joe Colopy — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 18:00:05 +0000

Willie Sutton was a famous bank robber from the first half of the twentieth century. One time a reporter asked him, “why do you rob banks?” His now famous response was, “because that’s where the money is.” The new money these days is personally identifiable information — email addresses and related bits — and Email Service Providers like Bronto are the new banks.

Today this reality became thrust into the forefront with Epsilon reporting that they had a major security breach that resulted in stolen email lists from many top brands including Best Buy, Capital One and Disney. Read more from the article in Security Week.

This is an unfortunate issue and reinforces why we take security and privacy very seriously at Bronto. We’ve invested much effort in the past 15 months into improving not only our own technology and internal security stance, but also providing many features to customers to allow them configure their own security controls according to their preferences. Among the areas we’ve improved during this time are our network, our internal management applications, and our internal policies and training. Additionally we’ve also improved our ability to detect and monitor activities going on inside our application and network, so appropriate staff are alerted to investigate, 24×7. On the customer side, we have added new features in the areas of account management, password security, user permissions, & API security. The security of your data is of the utmost importance to Bronto, and we never forget that.

We understand that we are a twenty-first century bank and the vault of your data is extremely valuable and needs to be kept very secure.

Unfortunately, with incidents like this, no one wins and the only redeeming value is that it sends a strong message to everyone in the industry that their security, whatever it is, could be better and forces them to re-assess and improve. We will certainly be re-assessing ours and looking for improvements. And we welcome conversation with anyone in the industry regarding how all of us can tighten security and provide a more secure world for all.

Video Tour of Bronto’s Email Marketing Application

Goodbye Omniture …

Joe Colopy — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:15:31 +0000

Yesterday I received this email from Omniture and its rapidly disappearing branding jumped out at me — actually it was pretty obvious considering that the purpose of the email was to explain the changes.

Omniture was acquired by Adobe last September for $1.8b so it’s not surprising to see their brand fading into the backdrop, but it is interesting to see it spelled out so clearly.

So, I bid farewell to the Omniture brand — you are quickly disappearing into the bowels of your acquiring company, like the many brands of compelling technology companies that came before you. I am sure a little bit of Omniture CEO Josh James died tonight and I suspect that, if the story plays out as expected, it won’t be too long until he moves on to other things as well.

Here are a couple branding examples from before and after the acquisition:

No related posts.

Joeism back online with Slicehost

Joe Colopy — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 13:45:38 +0000

About a year ago I mentioned that the Joeism blog was back on the original bronto server. Well that marriage ended a couple weeks ago when the hard drive in the server died after eight years of successful spinning.

All is well though. Through the magic of the Internet and my credit card, Joeism is back online through Slicehost — a hosted website provider that is a step above most of the stuff out there. Slicehost is geared more for developers so I had to brush off some rusty Linux and MySQL admin skills to get it going. Still got it and so far so good.

I will now resume my previous schedule of posting an entry every couple months. Stay tuned!

Intuit to acquire Constant Contact for $700mm

Joe Colopy — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:00:24 +0000

Ok — this isn’t true. But, here are some thoughts on why this could make sense:

Intuit is focused on small businesses with a financial bent (think TurboTax, Quicken).
Constant Contact is focused on micro/small businesses but from the marketing side.
Constant Contact is dipping into the SMB payment side with their event marketing / registration product. This is a good intersecting product for the two companies.
Intuit has a history of doing acquisitions, although this would be much bigger than most. Think Mint, Homestead, MyCorporation, …
Intuit has a history of running their acquisitions as distinct sub-brands versus rolling them into a uber-platform. This would be very important in realizing value of something like CTCT (or like competitor) given the fickle nature of their customer base. Someone one described to me that the micro-business customers that make up the bulk of CTCT’s customer base have almost a symbiotic relationship with the product. Alter it a lot, like what would happen if it were redesigned to fit into someone else’s platform, then there would be significant churn.

Here are thoughts on the valuation:

Intuit (INTU) has a market cap of $9b. Constant Contact (CTCT) has a market cap of $500mm.
I put a 40% premium on the deal from their public market cap. Omniture had a 45% premium, which is rich but not unrealistic.
The revenue multiples make sense. CTCT did about $130mm last year. They have about $50mm in cash. So, 700 – 50 is 650. Divided by 130 makes it 5. A valuation at a 5x revenue multiple would be consistent with other acquisitions.

Of course, Intuit could buy a smaller competitor like iContact or Vertical Response, but my gut tells me that they would step up to the plate with a good mix of cash and stock (Intuit has about $1b in the bank) to make a solid stake in this area versus opt for something less.

You heard it here first. If it ends up happening then the investment bankers can send me some of that multi-million dollar fee. Thanks.

Video Tour of Bronto’s Email Marketing Application

Joe Colopy — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:42:08 +0000

Fridays are great days and at most companies folks can expect to spend their Friday afternoons winding down and visualizing a cold beer in their hand. Not at Bronto and not this Friday. This Friday afternoon, I recruited a couple Brontos to put together a video tour of our flagship email marketing application.

Big thanks go to Brandon (the demo guru) and John (the video maestro) for putting together this Friday afternoon special. Also, thanks to Justin for his wizardry in getting this on the ‘net for the rest of the world to enjoy. So without further adieu, I present a “Tour of Bronto”:

You can also watch this on blip.tv or download the video (74MB MPEG)

From Facebook to Flickr. Bronto Goes Social.

Joe Colopy — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:01:13 +0000

Bronto tries to stay on the forefront of online marketing given our work with email marketing. Of course, social marketing and its related sites play well into that. We have a presence in a number of places and use each “property” for a slightly different purpose. Here’s a summary:

Facebook. We recently soft launched a fan page on Facebook called Bronto Nation. The purpose of this page is to connect with anyone that has an interest in Bronto. It tends to be more brand focused and contains blog posts, photos, and videos. Go to Bronto on Facebook.
Twitter. We’ve been on Twitter for a little while here but DJ Waldow, our Director of Best Practices and Deliverability, has recently stepped up our efforts in this area. The “tweets” center around email marketing best practices from Bronto and other leaders in the email marketing community. Kudos to DJ for already increasing our network by over 50% in less than a month. Also, special thanks to our product manager Adam Covati for getting us the bronto twitter name – it had been previously cybersquatted by someone else. Follow Bronto on Twitter.
Flickr. At Bronto, we’ve had a very long tradition of documenting the travels of a small inflatable Brontos around the world. We also have a number of pictures from our various social and community events. All the pictures are interesting (if not bizarre in places) and well worth a good browsing. View Bronto photos on Flickr.
YouTube. Last year, the account managers started an online video series called BrontoFire. BrontoFire is a 5-minute video magazine of sorts that looks at the good, bad, and ugly of various email marketing campaigns while passing on general best practices along the way. You can see these videos and other short clips of social antics around the office on YouTube. View videos on YouTube.
LinkedIn. We created a group for current and past employees of Bronto on LinkedIn. It is called the Bronto Network. If you are current or past employee and haven’t already joined, I encourage you to do so. Once a Bronto, Always a Bronto! Connect with Bronto on LinkedIn.

As if that wasn’t enough, we have brontonation.com. Bronto Nation is the launching pad for these social marketing efforts. It’s still in its early stages so expect some interesting developments there. And, finally, there is the Bronto Blog covering email marketing best practices. We are currently revamping it and will have an exciting new version of it to show soon.

Have any suggestions on how we can improve our social marketing initiatives? Let me know.

No related posts.

Bronto Server Back Like Seabiscuit

Joe Colopy — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:55:27 +0000

Old bronto server resting in the telecom rack at Bronto Headquarters.

Things often have a way of coming full circle. Back in May 2002, Bronto purchased its first server to host its email marketing application. The server, originally named bronto, was built by Blake Watters, a freshman at UNC Chapel Hill, for about $1000. It was a big purchase back in the day.

What a long strange trip its been. Now, we are many servers, people and sophistication away from those early days. But, sometimes it’s valuable to dust off the old, and make it new. Just like Seabiscuit, the old server found a new life — hosting this blog.

Before our domain bronto.com, there was brontomail.com. And, little known, prior to brontomail.com, there was joeism.com. Now, the first domain and first server back together again. All is well in world!

Thanks Doug for setting the server up and Blake for building it originally (where ever you are!)

Back in Action

“Lost” Faceoff: iTunes versus Bittorrent

Joe Colopy — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:43:55 +0000

Recently I’ve been thinking about how online marketing applies to video, in particular to how television shows and movies are delivered over the Internet. Of course, when delving into this area, you have to look at how video is being distributed illegally — the dark world of file sharing. This world is often a harbinger for what is going to work and not work as the Internet becomes the primary distribution vehicle for movies and television shows.

My experiences watching the popular television show Lost maps nicely to some of the new ways of watching video. Here is how it played out over the last few seasons:

Season 1. I watched the first season on DVDs from NetFlix. This is my favorite way to watch television since you get multiple episodes at once, the quality is great, and it is convenient.
Season 2. I subscribed to iTunes and the week’s latest episodes downloaded right to my desktop. It was automatic and very convenient. I paid thirty some dollars for the season and it worked out to be $2 an episode. Unlike most people, I don’t have a television to watch this on and, even if I did, I would have to tape/tivo it because I’m often still putting my kids to sleep when it comes on.
Season 3. This year I went to a neighbor’s house for the first two episodes. But, for the other day, I wasn’t able to do so I had to get the episode some other way.

With my test, I downloaded the episode through iTunes and through Bittorrent. Here are my thoughts on the pros and cons of each:

iTunes. Cost me $2. Extremely easy since billing already setup through iTunes. Good quality. Took 25 minutes to download.
Bittorrent. Cost me nothing. More involved but getting easier with rise of rss bittorrent services. Good quality but some risk of it being not quite right. Took 3 hours to download.

In the end, iTunes was better. $2 is a small price to pay for a better experience and piece of mind that the content was obtained and the relevant parties are being fairly compensated. However, iTunes works best in this case because the content is readily available. This isn’t always the case. Take one look at the movie selection from iTunes of Netflix’s on-demand offering and you’ll see what I mean. This is what makes downloading illegal content tempting for so many. Although it is still more challenging and not quite as easy as Napster used to be, it is getting easier and only a few steps away from being easy enough for regular people.

Thus the challenge — the longer that the movie houses struggle over the right solution for distributing video online the more time that illicit services have to rise and improve. Take a quick peek at my searches for Lost on YouTorrent and tvRSS and you’ll see what I mean. It is getting more and more approachable.

As for me, next week I’ll probably be back to watching to Lost at my neighbor’s house with a bowl of popcorn but perhaps by the time season 4 rolls around I’ll buy a real TV and hook it up to a new fangled Apple TV or Netflix appliance. We’ll see!

No related posts.

Google Reader on the iPhone is my killer app

Joe Colopy — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 03:50:05 +0000

I’ve been using RSS feeds to get my news for years.

I started simple. I used the Live Bookmark feature with Firefox. It worked well but ultimately limited me to following just a few news sources.

About a year ago, I purchased NetNewsWire for the Mac. It is a standalone desktop application and was an easy way to read many blogs and news sources. I still use it periodically. I tried to use Google Reader on my computer but never was too impressed. NetNewsWire was simply easier and quicker as a desktop application.

Google Reader on the iPhone changed everything. The interface is extremely clean and it is a extremely quick way to catch up on my favorite news sites and blogs anywhere.

It is my new killer app and I highly recommend if you haven’t tried it already.