TOO MUCH OF A DUMB THING

We all do dumb things in the course of our every day life, but, hopefully, this is limited when it affects those other than ourselves. Not so for the business world, according to a study by the Ponemon Research Institute, who found that 85 percent of the businesses you deal with have experienced a data security breach. Larry Ponemon, founder and chairman of the research group says, “many businesses may be discounting the long-term threat to customer retention and corporate reputation. This with 74 percent reporting the loss of customers; 59 percent facing potential litigation; 33 percent possible fines; and 32 percent a drop in share value. If they don’t even care about the effects of a data breach on the profitability of their company, how much concern could they possibly have for the loss of your private information? This is a preposterous position to be taken by the organizations that collect and maintain our sensitive data, but it gets even worse. Just under half of the breaches were from lost or stolen laptops and other storage devices, which shouldn’t even be leaving the building anyway with individual personal data. Incompetent employees handling the data came in second. With all the aggravation and money it could cost their customers, 46 percent of the study respondents were not going to implement data encryption for portable devices like laptops. Many businesses were going to require outside vendors to encrypt sensitive data in transit, which is a great move, but coming much too late.