PRIORITIES CHANGE…ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S ONLY CONSUMER PRIVATE INFORMATION

In an account by ZDNet, “Are businesses getting complacent on security?” Larry Dignan quotes John Pescatore from Gartner Research: “Security has fallen out of the top ten business priorities and complacency may be setting in without big attacks grabbing the headlines.” My personal interpretation: When the breaches go away, business will play. Like I said in the last blog, leaving decisions on these matters to a corporate mentality always favors the needs and bottom line of the company. Chief Information Officers (CIO’s) are more concerned with “improving business processes, controlling costs and retaining customers, according to Pescatore. Bye bye security, hello profits. He also talks of the business world going to the next step in networking, Web 2.0, where security could be threatened by new developments like “mashups.” If you’re not familiar—I wasn’t—the latter term refers to a new breed of Web-based applications created by hackers and programmers where one data source could be combined with another, even multiple locations, into one dynamic entity. So we’re embracing new technology to further improve business interests, while at the same time putting personal data security on the back burner…again. Is there a cycle to all this, and, if so, when does the consumer come out on top?