According to a new survey by Deloitte & Touche LLP (“Deloitte”) and the Ponemon Institute LLC, personally identifiable information (PII) of customers and employees is being exposed — frequently and repeatedly — potentially putting hundreds of thousands of individuals at risk.
For those of you who have been keeping up with current events this should come as no surprise. And don’t forget the incidents that have occurred recently in the UK either. I thought that increased regulatory requirements like PCI and HIPAA were supposed to fix this sort of thing. So what’s happening? In a word: capitalism. Remember, in a market economy the primary goal is to maximize profits. This also means that public companies have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value. It should therefore be apparent that spending on things that provide no tangible value (like security) will usually be low. Yes, I know how all the security consultants and vendors go around telling everybody that security and compliance should be viewed as a way to gain competitive advantage, but they’re doing a terrible job of persuading the C-suite. I’m not advocating that we ditch capitalism. On the contrary, I think it’s the C-suite that simply doesn’t get it. So who’s fault is that?
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