Summary: Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) is a tactic of rhetoric and fallacy used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda. FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative and dubious/false information designed to undermine the credibility of their beliefs. An individual firm, for example, might use FUD to invite unfavorable opinions and speculation about a competitor’s product; to increase the general estimation of switching costs among current customers; or to maintain leverage over a current business partner who could potentially become a rival.

FUD techniques may be crude and simple, as in claiming “I read a paper by a Harvard professor that shows you are wrong regarding subject XXX”, but the paper does not exist. (Were the paper to exist then it would not be FUD but valid criticism.) Alternatively FUD may be very subtle, employing an indirect approach. Someone who employs FUD cannot generally back up their claims (i.e. “I don’t recall which professor or which year the paper is from”). To dispel FUD, the easiest way is to ask for details and then provide well researched hard facts which disprove them. For instance, if it can be shown that no Harvard professor ever has written a paper on subject XXX, then the FUD is dispelled.

The term originated to describe disinformation tactics in the computer hardware industry and has since been used more broadly. FUD is a manifestation of the appeal to fear.

Read The Full Article Here

-

To one degree or another, we all live with FUD—the cacophony of fears, uncertainties and doubts that plague daily life. Will my 401(k) account ever rebound? Did I leave the coffeepot on this morning? Am I really going to get a brain tumor from my cell phone?

But while we’re all allowed to be neurotic worrywarts in our private lives, it’s seldom a quality that’s admired in business. So why do so many security executives still rely on gloom and doom tactics to sell management on security investments?

Well, for one thing, it’s easy—there’s a wealth of scare stories to choose from. Most organizations still view security as a cost center, and it’s much simpler to make a dramatic “invest or else” argument than it is to connect security expenditures to the company’s bottom line with analysis and research. The term FUD was originally coined in the 1970s in reference to IBM’s marketing technique of spreading scary rumors about a competitor’s new product to dissuade customers from taking a “risk” by buying it. FUD relies on emotion, not reason, to make a sale (or prevent one). “If you’re having a [security] discussion where you’re talking about what happened to the other guy and not looking at it in terms of what it [realistically] means to your company, and it’s all about them and not about youthen you’re probably using FUD,” says Ken Tyminski, vice president and CISO for Prudential Financial.

Read The Full Article Here

If you enjoyed that why not find a job or read our guide to working in the 21st century. You can also join our Kiva team or hire me for your project.