My email to the aforementioned tech firm found it's way to their IT Head who corrects my initial calculation that every extra bit doubles the strength of the encryption. There are other factors involved in determining a comparison between two ciphers. A straight doubling per bit, as I mention in my previous post is not an accurate comparison. The strength of the company's encryption is still more powerful on a magnitude in the thousands or millions or billions but as he states, "Unfortunately, this sort of information is lost to the vast majority - as would representing DSS's strength as a huge exponent. Anyone who fundamentally understands encryption would know the jist of what is being said - that DSS is at LEAST 32 times stronger."

Okay - fair enough. In my opinion it's vastly underselling the product and its benefits. Kind of like describing the Empire State Building as being at LEAST five stories high. Not incorrect - but not the most accurate description either.

But what really got me was how the IT Head ended off his message, "[you need] to be aware that the papers we have are basically marketing material, not technical specifications."

Maybe it's just me - but I think that marketing material shouldn't be inherintly less accurate than technical specifications. I'm likely an idealist in this regards, but I don't feel that the job of marketing professional is to misrepresent, exadgurate or dumb down. Rather, a marketer should act as a translator. Someone who can take the message delivered to them in the language of an engineer or software developer and accurately translate that into something that the intended clientel can relate to or care about.

Stating anything other than the full and honest truth to make a sale is a short-sighted and poor approach to business. I don't want to sell to the person who has no use for what I have to offer. The person who has no use for what I offer is going to tell everyone they know that what I offer is useless.

Find out who your product appeals to. Speak to these people directly and truthfully in terms they can relate to. That's what marketing should be about.