IS3230 Access Security
Paul Delgado
Thomas Cuneo
Saul Flores
6/25/15
Week 2
Discussion

Chapter 3
Competitive Use of Information talks about the advantage of having sacred valuable information, because if a company or an organization has access to formulas, recipes, and trade secrets from a competitor, it would be key to putting together a strategy to eliminate the competition.
Warfare as a Model for Business talks about the competition, for example liking Starbucks or coffee bean. Do you like eBay or amazon, do you like coke or Pepsi.
Here is a reference to the section: The basic idea of warfare as a model for business is to view your competitors as opposing armies, and market share/customers as the battle field. You win by taking and holding profitable market share.
As a company, you have to learn about your weaknesses and advantages to progress. This helps avoid damaging battles.
This section also talks about the famous Sun Tzu.
Sun Tzu was an ancient military general and strategist. His book The Art of War, is one of the definitive treatises on warfare. In his book there are six principles that apply very well to a business setting.
Capture your market without destroying it—Sun Tzu called this “Win all without fighting.” You must capture market to be profitable, but if the act of capturing it ruins the profitability of the market the fight wasn’t worth the effort. A price war, as discussed above, illustrates this concept well. It is not worth starting a price war if the result is a market in which you cannot sell a product at a profit.

Attack your competitors’ weak points; avoid their strengths—If you take your competition head on against their strength (challenging a discount store on price, for example) you end up fighting a battle of attrition. Although you may win the battle, the victory will be costly. Focus on their weaknesses, maximize your gains while minimizing use of resources, and increase your profits. For example if you can’t beat your competitors on price, focus on differentiating your business by providing a better customer experience than your competitors provide.
Use knowledge of your opponent and cunning to maximize your business intelligence—to effectively attack your competitors’ weak points, you must have a deep understanding of their business and decision processes. Likewise, you have to strive to keep your plans secret and mask your actions to keep your competitors from utilizing their strategies on you

Use speed and preparation to overcome the competition — to fully exploit your knowledge of your competition, you must act swiftly without hesitation. Your company must make decisions quickly, and be able to anticipate the competition’s reactions.
Use alliances and industry control points to make the competition conform to your will—through a strong web of alliances and control of strategic points in your industry, you control the rules of the contest, increasing your ability to anticipate your competitors’ actions.
Develop character as a leader to maximize employee effort—it takes a special kind of leader to implement these strategies and utilize the tremendous potential of its employees.

Valuation of Information: Talks about how valuable your information is, in most cases some information such as Health information if improperly disclosed, can cost an organization millions of dollars in fines and even lead to prison sentences for those responsible for the disclosure. In other cases loss of information such trade secrets, secret sauces can lead to loss of revenue.
Penalties for Improper Disclosure * Unknowingly disclosed—$100 per violation * Reasonable cause to disclose—$1,000 per violation * • Disclosure due to willful negligence situation that is corrected— $10,000 per violation * • Disclosure due to willful negligence that is not corrected— $50,000 per violation * • Disclosure due to criminal intent—up to $250,000 and 10 years in jail
This segment also talks about the Penalties for disclosing PII.
Social Security number—Criminal penalties for certain violations up to $250,000 and five years in prison; civil penalties of $5,000 for misuse or fraud; and civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation of noncompliance with Social Security Act regulations.
Credit card/bank account information—a corporation can be brought into civil court and forced to pay damages. There are criminal penalties as well. Knowingly and willfully disclosing information, and willfully maintaining a system of records without published notice can result in a $5,000 fine. If an organization willfully accesses information under false pretenses, it can be fined $5,000 from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The disclosure will also be subject to at least a $500,000 fine and the loss of ability to process payment cards from the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The PCI DSS is a standards group made up of all the major credit card companies.

Business Drivers Talks about the pros and cons of your business actions.
The advantage gained from keeping the information secret, and the risks avoided by controlling access to the information.
Some information is not usually worth the effort to secure. The date of the company picnic is a good example.