Cyber Defense eMagazine November Edition for 2021

We buy more products...and we’re hacked. We adhere to compliance standards...but we get breached.
We hire managed services providers...our data is compromised anyway. The industry’s response has
long been to build new products, knowing that buyers will come; when the technology fails to defend
against a breach, managed services providers step in to remediate after the fact and “manage” the
customer’s environment against future incursions.
Then a Colonial Pipeline happens, and we buy more stuff.
It’s a vicious cycle, but fortunately it’s a cycle organizations can finally break. By stepping away from
traditional notions of ownership (like buying a security solution) and embracing Membership Economy
principles, organizations can improve cyber resilience while decreasing the complexity of their technology
stacks and reducing their overall cyber spend.
What’s the Membership Economy, Anyway?
The Membership Economy includes any organization whose members (customers) have an “ongoing
and formal stake” in that organization. 1 The human desire to belong, to be part of a community or affiliated
with an exclusive organization, is fulfilled in the Membership Economy, and Netflix is one of its bestknown
acolytes.
Importantly, the Membership Economy moves organizations away from transactional sales that are costbased
and require conversions, cross-sells, and other additional transactions toward what Baxter calls
the forever sale -- a lifetime of customer value where retention and delight are the outcomes. The
relationship ends only when the member cancels subscription; otherwise, that first transaction lasts
forever.
Key components of the Membership Economy include:
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Continually focusing on the needs of members
Understanding member frustration and satisfaction
Embracing a willingness to f meet member needs and wants through flexibility, innovation, and
evolution
Communicating a strong, clear value proposition
Investing in the membership experience
Ownership as Liability
Cybersecurity companies, like many technology organizations, focus on transactional sales. Customers
buy a solution for a period of time--typically two to three years--and are largely left to fend for themselves
until their contract comes up for renewal. Also like other technology deployments, security installations
1
Baxter, Robbie Kellman.”The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build
Recurring Revenue”. McGraw-Hill Education. 2015, p. 26.
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