Meet Chris Smith, a cybersecurity consultant with CSC2 out of the UK, who decided it would be cool to trample all over the well-established books I’ve published since 2016 and use the term “Surviving ISO” in his own book.
Over on LinkedIn, I found Smith promoting the launch of this new book, “Surviving ISO Compliance without Screwing it Up.”
A day or two before his book’s launch — when I first saw his posts — I commented that I wasn’t happy with the fact our books had similar titles, since my book, Surviving ISO 9001, has been out since 2016 and has multiple editions, an entire website, and an established brand already. Smith, who is apparently as stupid as he is a douchebag, thought I was praising his book, and posted something about how cool it was that there were two books with the title.
I then asked him politely if he could consider changing the title of his book before he launched it, since mine was already well-established.
At which point, the smug prick deleted my comments and blocked me on LinkedIn, and then proceeded to launch the book on Amazon with his ripped-off title intact.
A quick check of Smith’s own LinkedIn profile shows him job-hopping from one place to another, never holding a job for more than two years, with the exception of a stint at NQA as an auditor (that sounds about right), which lasted him for two years and four months. He claims a bunch of awards, but at least one seems to be issued by his own company (it has the CsC2 logo on it), and I’d bet the others are typical industry vanity awards. I’m not entirely sure about that last part, though.
I’ll not get into the fact that he doesn’t seem to know the difference between “compliance” and “conformity,” and that his book’s title isn’t clear on what ISO standards he’s even talking about. Even the back cover is silent on this pretty important detail. Only in the promotional materials can you see that he is talking about ISO 9001, but also various other standards. How a cybersecurity guy knows fuck all about ISO 9001 is beyond me, but whatever. I do like how his AI-generated ads mangle his own book’s cover.
The problem for me is that I never trademarked the title and only copyrighted the book itself, and that limits my options legally. (Trademarking anything with the name “ISO” in it is very problematic, and I had investigated doing so, but realized it was unlikely to succeed.) So now, I have to investigate legal action against him under what’s known as “common law trademark enforcement.” My case is solid, but it’s a bit of an uphill battle. Because the Surviving ISO 9001 title and brand have been in the market for so long, though, Smith will have a tough time defending.
Now, keep in mind, this isn’t Smith’s first run-in with trademark and copyright infringement. There’s another company with the exact same name (“CSC2”) operating in the exact same field (cybersecurity consulting). Smith’s company’s full name is “CS Cyber Compliance,” and the other company’s name is “Cybersecurity and Compliance Center” — dramatically similar.
Smith’s website also claims “accreditation” by the ISO certification body Approachable Certification, so I’m not sure what that’s about. I suspect he’s just using their logo. He’s also got the logo for Centre for Assessment (CfA), which isn’t even a CB anymore, since they were bought out by Amtivo.
Dick moves all around by Smith, but it’s on-brand for poorly-employed cyberbros in the ISO certification world.
Christopher Paris is the founder and VP Operations of Oxebridge. He has over 35 years’ experience implementing ISO 9001 and AS9100 systems, and helps establish certification and accreditation bodies with the ISO 17000 series. He is a vocal advocate for the development and use of standards from the point of view of actual users. He is the writer and artist of THE AUDITOR comic strip, and is currently writing the DR. CUBA pulp novel series. Visit www.drcuba.world
