Week 6 Studio: Yondr Phone Pouches

Today’s case study is from earlier this week. Yondr is a new technology – pouch that you can put your phone into so you cannot use it. It has a magnetic seal that can be opened only when programmed to. While initially used for things like preventing recording at concerts and performances, it has found a big audience among middle and high schools. Schools asks kids to put their phone in the pouch at the beginning of the day, and the pouch is able to be opened only at the end of the day.

As the case study for today, read about how well this went: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/style/yondr-pouch-school-phone-ban.html

Identify patterns

Let’s start the way we normally start: let’s fill out some Actors and Motivations worksheet worksheets. For this week’s case, it isn’t as obvous who the attacker is, who the defender is, and who the victims might be. Do you best.

In the last 2 weeks of class, we have identified a number of patterns (from economics) that occur in these cases. Let’s see if we can find any of these:

Misaligned Incentives: Is this a situation where the person who is in the best position to defend against attacks is not the one who is harmed by the attacks?
Adverse Selection: Is this a situation where participation is voluntary, and only some people (e.g. high risk individuals) choose to participate?
Moral Hazard: Is this a situation where people know they are being protected, and so engage in riskier behavior?
Market for Lemons: Is this a situation where all high quality products are driven out of a market because buyers can’t tell the difference?

To try to think through these, let’s use the Policy Worksheet. Fill out the first page of the worksheet only for today (we will cover the 2nd page later in class).

Policy Suggestions

Let’s use the knowledge we have been working on in this course to analyze the situation, and see if we can come up with serious, substantial, realistic policy suggestions.

Step 1: Understand the situation

The first side is all about trying to understand the situation. Look at the articles about ransomware attacks above, think about the way they affect the energy sector, and try to fill out the first side of the worksheet.

You can also fill out the first question on the back (about weakest link vs. best shot).

As you try to answer each of these questions, go back to the relevant notes on strategic incentives, externalities, and information asymmetry.

Step 2: Find analogies

Once you’ve got an understanding of the economic properties of this situation, let’s find some analogies. What are some other situations in the world – not cybersecurity related – that have similar economic properties? For example, if you identified a market for lemons, you can look for other markets for lemons (like cars) to get ideas for solutions.

First, start by looking at the answer to each question separately, and identify similar situations that we have talked about that have similar properties.

Second, look across the situations you’ve identified and see if any of those situations have more than one of the properties. Try to find one or more situations that has most (or all) of the properties in common with this one.

Step 3: Identify Potential Solutions

Now that you’ve identified similar situations, look for potential policy solutions. Start by using the notes on strategic incentives, information asymmetry to identify potential policy ideas. Also, look at your similar situations, and think about ways that we have tried to deal with those problems.

Brainstorm. Make a list of more than one policy idea that be able to help with this situation. The goal of step 3 is really to identify multiple potential ideas.

Step 4: Cybersecurity Arms Race

There are a lot of good policy ideas out there, but not all of them work for cybersecurity. Once you have more than one idea, step back and think about the arms race problem. Once we implement a new policy, the attackers will adjust their behavior around that policy. Sometimes that adjustment will still leave the world in a better place, and sometimes the policy just creates more problems.

For each of your potential ideas, think about whether it would likely be helpful in the cybersecurity context or not. Use this information to make your final recommendations.