Yahoo! ex CEO should have leveraged the “cool factor”

Posted by Joe Franscella, Monday, May 14, 2012:

I just got done reading Deborah L. Jacobs’ Forbes article on how lying about having a degree in computer science led ex Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson to resign from his position. Thompson should have learned from the top tech guns.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the scores of other wildly successful tech moguls not only proved that it isn’t necessary to have any kind of degree to succeed in tech but have also demonstrated that it provides an esoteric “cool factor.”

Had Thompson made a big deal about not having the degree which he claimed, he’d likely still be in the driver’s seat shouting Yahoo! at the top of his lungs.

Moving right along … Elinor Mills over at CNET posted a story last Friday about startup Artemis, self described as:

… founded by a group of Internet security specialists to deliver real-world solutions for building a more trustworthy Internet. Our premier service is the .SECURE gTLD, developed to provide enhanced and robust security and trust across the rapidly changing Internet with the advent of new generic top level domains. (https://artemis.net/about-artemis.html).

It looks as if the bottom line is that in exchange for following the Artemis regulatory framework, organizations can get a www.yourbrandnamehere.secure URL. The “.secure” ending verifies that the website is “safer” than current .com, .net, .tv, .etc… sites.

Seems like like a great idea, but to be successful Artemis is going to have to overcome some huge public relations challenges. How do you convince the world to move away from CAs and the PKI? This challenge becomes even more difficult when you consider how Google and other powerhouses are investing even more in security assets such as certificates and PKI improvements.