Ho, Ho, Hold the Holiday Gift Cards

Use it or lose it, right? With that concept in mind, I sat down one Saturday recently to consolidate the cards and I found myself in a rabbit hole.

I had no idea how much of your privacy is being violated by gift cards. This whole post is my personal opinion after having just gone through a major eye opening exercise.

As I said above, it started with a stack of gift cards. All kinds, Amex, Mastercard, Visa and Amazon. So I looked up online, is there anything I can do with these gift cards that have about $2.16 on them?

It turns out there is.

Before I get into the solution, let me tell you what I used to do. I used to check the balance online, bring the card with me to the store and then ask the clerk to debit the exact remaining balance on the cards. It was quite satisfying, actually, to bring the cards down to a $0 balance. I hate it when they have $1.07 or $0.52 left on them because I am the type of person who will pick up a penny on the street. In other words, I am quite thrifty. Just ask my husband and my kids. I will wear out clothing, refuse to throw things away if they are still providing use. I have pants from when I was in my 20’s that I still wear.

But it is a little embarrassing to ask for those small amounts to be debited, if I am being completely vulnerable to you. The checkout person gets grumpy and it slows down the sale so people pile up behind you. Neither one of those are reactions I enjoy.

So I tried to never let any card have that little of a balance, but I also have kids who receive a lot, and I mean A LOT, of gift cards. Birthdays, Christmas, etc. usually means they will receive a gift card because, as they grow up, who knows what they are interested in? And they use them until they can’t which means there is a small balance.

And that created the pile on my desk.

Now that I have given you a premise, here is what happened on that Saturday. I researched if there was anyway to use these small balances. It turns out there is!

2023 Predictions

About this time last year, I predicted that cybersecurity in the Metaverse was going to be a big deal in 2022 and I begged the cybersecurity community to get involved before people got hurt. 😒

When I made the prediction last year, I turned it into a webinar series.

Well, my prediction for 2023 is that cybersecurity in the Board room is going to be THE topic in our industry. So, like I did before, I am turning it into a webinar series.

Do you know what has me very surprised lately? The use of security white papers and privacy white papers as part of the due diligence process for a vendor.

While I am a little wary of these types of documents because they can go stale very quickly, I went ahead and drafted one for a customer. It was an incredibly successful endeavor! My client was able to completely forego the security questionnaire.

No one hates security questionnaires as much as I do, but I also don’t have an alternative solution. Well, not one that is available right now.

I decided that I do like the security white paper trend. It is probably because if you already have your privacy and cybersecurity operations organized, like ClearOPS helps you do, then it is pretty easy to put one together. The value is that it makes you look like you care, that you are on top of things and really well organized.

In other words, it builds trust. The best way to build trust is to be transparent and efficient.

Let me know if you want to know more about this trend.

That’s it for this post. Have a great weekend.

Best, Caroline

About the author: Caroline McCaffery is a co-founder at ClearOPS, software for proactive vCISOs. She is a frequent blogger and speaker with over 20 years of experience as a lawyer working with tech startups. You can connect with her on Linkedin.

About ClearOPS. Proactive vCISOs use ClearOPS to automate repetitive tasks, accelerating the growth of their business. Do you conduct gap assessments? ClearOPS cybersecurity management program technology increases efficiency by combining public and private data providing vCISOs with over 150M data points that empowers them to proactively manage their clients cybersecurity. Inquiries: [email protected]