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I am confident that has meaning but it is beyond my understanding. If AFS is operating in this manner what does that mean relative to keeping unwanted folks from accessing proprietary data?

Cheers!

 

That could indeed be the case.

As has been discussed in the case of ZX Ventures and RateBeer one of the reasons that ABI became a part owner (and partner) is to access data.

It is very difficult to divine genuine intentions in these various investments.

Cheers!

 

FWIW I am of the opinion that ABI seeks every competitive advantage that they can achieve. Given this thought it would be my expectation that ABI is accessing information which provides them a 'leg up' as compared to other users (i.e., breweries) of RateBeer data.

It could be argued that this 'extra' information is a benefit of investment: ROI.

Cheers!

P.S. Thank you for your patience and generosity in sharing information with me on the topic of Cloud Computing.

 

Then lets pay a bit more attention to what is being asked for rather than making an extended response bringing in other issues. How does that sound?

 

ok

 

My current suspicion is that by partnering/acquiring that minority stake their attention was focused much more on improving the quality and security of the database. Especially since the whole site has been a "home grown" product. As one example, on RB the owner publicly reported that a Brewer or representative had already used their log-in privileges to begin changing the names of their beers on their brewery page. He goes own to report that was detected fairly quickly, some necessary data protection steps were taken and the damage had been corrected.

 

In the few cases I'm aware of, the data are double encrypted in such a way that even the employees of the company providing the hosting service do not have access to confidential information.

 

Such fraudulent charges are much more likely to occur when you swipe your card at a gas station, restaurant, or any other place where you may hand someone your card to pay a bill. Further, if you swipe and then put in a verification code there are conditions under which someone nearby, e.g., at the grocery store, can determine your code, even if you block visual access to the keyboard with your other hand.

Beyond the protection against fraudulent charages offered you by your credit card company, assuming you report them soon enough, Amazon and many (or most) other on-line retailers offer you an additional layer of security. (This is why you should never click on a link withing a mail that appears to be from the place you purchased something online.)

The transmission of card information between your computer and Amazon's is encrypted in such a way that can can be read only by you as the person entering the data and them as the recipient of the data into their accounting system. You are at greater risk of some one hacking Amazon and stealing their data on you than you are from making the online purchase in the first place. So your trust in Amazon is justified only if they take necessary steps to keep their database and your information secure.

 

I guess I can understand why this is a neat idea, but I'm also going to be cynical about this need to reinvent the wheel.

 

If you have a pointer to a single system that already does what this is claimed to do, could you please share it? Thanks.

 

Hey Huck,

I'm Jason, the CEO of AFS, and definitely understand your concern.

InBev invested in us through Zx Ventures, their Venture Capital group. The investment is a minority share purchase, and they hold no board seats, information rights, or acquisition rights.

All of our data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and client data is never shared between clients or with outside groups (including investors).

We knew we might face some backlash from that investment,
but it was a huge vote of confidence in us from the largest beer maker in the world,
and we now work with a number of large corporate clients in coffee, distilling, baking, and non-alcoholic beverages.

We've had to pass infrastructure and data-security compliance review with all of them,
and they are all assured that InBev can't access, use, or benefit from their data in any way.

The craft breweries using our system are on the same infrastructure and have the same protections built in as the big companies.

I'm not sure if this is enough to reassure you,
but I'm happy to continue the discussion here,
and always available to answer questions via email!
jason [at] gastrograph [dot] com

Cheers!
- Jason

 

Hey,

I'm Jason, the founder and CEO of AFS;
Your comment here is correct.

I started the research for AFS at Penn State and developed it into a product for 2+ years before InBev got a demo of the tech and moved forward with investment.

We love working at the scale and scope of InBev almost as much as we love craft beer,
but the market for understanding flavor and predicting preferences is much much larger than beer alone.

Cheers!
- Jason

 

Thanks for the comment!

 

Hey Tom,

I'm the founder and CEO of AFS and happy to answer that question!

No one but the client has access to their data and the results of their data.
Our AI learns generic things across all of the products that we have information on,
but product specific and company specific results are only available to that client.

In addition - InBev has no information rights, no board seat, and no acquisition rights,
and the data is encrypted at rest and in transit, so it is safe in that regard as well.

Cheers!
- Jason

 

I would be very interested in that as well....