The Present Indicative, 18 November 2025

My Current Mood: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

“Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.” Andrew Carnegie, The Empire of Business

A couple weeks back, Indicate Marketing made its first dollar. My friend, David O’Connell, hung up his own shingle to support commercial banking lenders, eponymously called O’Connell Lending Insights. David has past experience as a loan officer, underwriter, and credit analyst, and applies his subject matter expertise to data sets to help clients (lenders and their vendors) understand the highs, lows, dips, and turns of the commercial lending rollercoaster. David is very smart, and needed a template in which to pour his perspective that was audience friendly, user facile, and on brand to OLI. I was honored to put my efforts to the task, and when it helped net his next client, the check was in the mail (time worked plus surprise bonus).

Yes, we could have transacted business digitally. We both have online software to send the invoice and receive the payment, but I asked (and he enthusiastically approved) sending me a check, so I could preserve the moment in the photograph attached to this post. I needed the moment to matter.

But not be too revealing. My wife took a couple of pics to ensure my fingers carefully concealed OLI’s routing and account information at the bottom of the check. David was enthusiastic that I share the photo online, and I was eager to preserve our friendship by protecting his CIA: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

Confidentiality

Thanks to the internet, we all live double lives. We have our physical life, and often we share that life with an online spirit: in commerce, communication, and connection. For better and worse we have extended the boundaries of our interactions across the globe, and that distance has exposed us to a final C: crime.

It takes another C to protect our identities. In The Incredibles, Elastigirl explains to her kids in the immediate emergency of rescuing Mr Incredible that “your identity is your most valuable possession.” They protect it by putting on masks to prevent identification and protect their confidentiality.

Of course, we find out in an earlier scene that her husband and their father, Mr Incredible, revealed his real identity to the bad guys through technology, therefore exposing them all to the central conflict of the movie, which concludes with their house and all of their physical property turned into a fiery wreck by the antagonist’s plane.

Like supers in The Incredibles we all wear masks in our physical lives, but if we don’t wear them online, then each of our lives (physical and online) are exposed to…well, not giant metal robots, but our potential ruin.

Integrity

Integrity (and a lack thereof) has been in the news a lot in recent times. The quality of our political integrity can have a direct impact on the condition of our data integrity. But in the absence of morality we have passwords, multi-factor authentication, and biometrics to prevent bad actors from acting bad.

Oxford’s earliest instance of the word integrity comes from around 1450, borrowed from Latin and meaning untouched. It is used to identify the Virgin Mary remaining…well…untouched:

When he was borne savyng / his moders integritee (When he was born saving his mother’s integrity)

And what are passwords, multi-factor authentication, and biometrics if not modern miracles keeping us chaste?

Availability

This past weekend my wife gave me a list of groceries to buy at our local big box store, and she downloaded an app on my phone for me to use their coupons. “How does this work?” I asked her. I am not a luddite; just intolerant of every app being different enough to make them all counter intuitive. “Just ask the clerk to do it. I’ve clipped all the relevant coupons. They can do the rest.”

I’m surprised that the Murphy in Murphy’s Law does not come from the earliest days of science. Dating to the 1940s, we’re less than a century from the concise expression: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” With my cart full of groceries, I opened the app and to my horror, instead of clipped coupons I had a message which said, “We’re Sorry. You have no clipped offers.”

I showed the clerk my phone and said, “I saw them when I entered the building. Do you have any idea where they are now?”

“Maybe you used them,” the clerk declared, looking at the impatient line behind me.

Not interested in fighting for a handful of savings, I snapped a screenshot of the message and saved the battle for my wife who lives to talk to managers. Wouldn’t you know it, the coupon screen reappeared once in the parking lot and the cell towers could triangulate my position.

“Think you just need to get on their WiFi” my wife suggested after the fact via text. Helpful. We live in a world where we must be connected to get the full benefits. And that connection is the very path that leaves us exposed to online risk. In this instance, my data was not available due to thick walls and bad customer service. These were passive impediments. There are many active contributors looking to brick up the consumer, the business, the industry. And we must all work together to watch our eggs. Wherever we put them.

In Related News…

I began with a quote from Juvenal: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchers? And the answer is we do! This week’s episode of The Future Indicative features the topic of cybersecurity, with guest Tom Clapper, Director of Information Assurance at Redhorse Corporation. He outlines the need for proper cyber hygiene to protect our confidentiality, preserve our integrity, and promote availability. This is a very special afterschool episode that needs to be heard with your kids and their grandparents. For your collective peace of mind.

The Future Indicative, Ep 3 Part 1

The Future Indicative, Ep 3 Part 2

Enjoy!

Alex Effgen