Black Friday: Brought to you by Virtual

We’ve all had one of those days when you think that your job has no meaning. And I’m sure some people look from the outside at someone working in technology consortia and think “Wow…that’s pretty arcane.” But I need to look no further than Black Friday and Cyber Monday to realize that the work we do here at Virtual has a pretty significant impact on the world.

Come Friday and Monday, countless shoppers will descend on the malls and web sites of the world to do their holiday shopping.

They’ll come to cash registers with point of sale devices and payment applications protected by PCI Security Standards, from the PCI Security Standards Council, a Virtual client since their inception.

They’ll pay with mobile devices using Near Field Communications, driven by the NFC Forum, a Virtual client that we helped launch over a dozen years ago.

They’ll authenticate those payments using FIDO, a client for several years now.

If they can’t find an item, they’ll come home and search on Google—with the results being guided by the members of our client SEMPO, the Search Marketing Professionals Association.

Or perhaps they’ll skip the search engine, having seen a clever advertisement using a new Top Level Domain (TLD) like “.blackfriday.” Those are promoted by another one of our clients, the Domain Name Association.

I could go on—from the folks at the Digital Analytics Association keeping track of it all, to the work that people at organizations like SAFECode and ICASI do to keep it all secure.

But that would keep me from shopping.