Novel means of security, brand protection, and product anti-counterfeiting

» PRACTICE Good Anti-Counterfeiting Techniques

To fight the counterfeiter, a single weapon is rarely sufficient. To deter a counterfeiter takes PRACTICE. And this blog addresses how PRACTICE (Plan, Research, Activate, Collect, Train, Investigate, Convict and Evolve) leads to a multifaceted ecosystem of tactics to prevent, detect and react to counterfeiting.

So, a version of an old joke to start. Patient: “Doc, are you comfortable with your diagnosis?” Doctor: “Ma’am, I’ve been practicing medicine for 40 years.” Patient: “Well, I’d like a second opinion from someone doesn’t need any more practice, and actually knows what he’s doing.”

However, any physician worth her salt invests in CME, or continuing medical education. Life is practice. Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it can always improve on the imperfect that is the now. And PRACTICE is the acronym I’ll use for the crucial eight elements in an effective anti-counterfeiting ecosystem.

» How Do You Address That?

Classes of counterfeits, like classes of people we meet at social events, include “addressable” or “unaddressable” as an attribute. The differences between addressable and unaddressable counterfeits make all the difference in terms of the strategy a brand owner must support for brand protection. In this blog, I hope to show the difference between these two broad types of counterfeiting, and argue why the strategies must differ. Like every complex issue in life, there will be shades of gray; since I argue for a multi-pronged strategy regardless, these shades of gray need not give you the blues.

» First Day

Everything has a starting point. Every blog, just as every job. This is the start of my blog. This blog is about authentication, security, and brand protection. More specifically, it is about how to achieve these using printing and image processing in combination with other technologies. Authentication is proof that something is what it claims to be. Security can mean many things to different people, but in the context of my blog it means both the prevention of fraud and the integrity of data. Brand protection is more ambiguous, but it is addressed best when the response to fraud—a breach in product security—is accurate, rapid and effective.