Should Companies Share Criminal Blame In ID Theft?

snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia criticizes the lack of criminal charges for corporate negligence in data breaches in the wake of last week's Best Western breach, which exposed the personal data of 8 million customers. 'The responsibilities attached to retaining sensitive personal identity information should include criminal charges against the company responsible for a leak, in addition to the party that receives the information,' Venezia writes. 'Until the penalties for giving away sensitive information in this manner include heavy fines and possibly even jail time for those responsible for securing that information, we'll see this problem occur again and again.' As data security lawyer Thomas J. Smedinghoff writes, data security law is already shifting the blame for data breaches onto IT, thanks to an emerging framework of complex regulations that could result in grave legal consequences should your organization suffer a breach. To date, however, IT's duty to provide security and its duty to disclose data breaches does not include criminal prosecution. Yet, with much of the data security framework being shaped by 'IT negligence' court cases over 'reasonable' security, that could very well be put to the test some day in court." It's a slippery slope to be sure, but where should the buck stop?

Comments

Yes/No

[HappySqurriel]

I think it is entirely appropriate to investigate a company when large ammounts of personal information ends up being 'stolen' ... If it turns out that the company did not take the necessary steps to protect people's personal information they should face some consequences. At the same time, there has to be an understanding that even the best technologies available and best practices may not prevent all personal information theft so a company should not face harsh consequences if they took the necessary steps to protect people's information.

Self reporting of a felony would not happen

[frith01]

You have a choice, allow organizations to report the data breach, or have them cover it up to avoid the penalty.

[ Why would anyone report a data breach when that means they would face jail time ? ]

Remember, the odds of an external entity finding out about the data breach is extremely small (except for the ones taking the data of course ).

Criminal Charges?

[db32]

Sure...while we are at it lets put a cop in jail every time someone in their city gets mugged, murdered, raped, etc.

I will be exiting the field the moment some kind of stupidity like what is suggested goes in place. I have a family, and I have no intention spending time in jail being a scapegoat for something like this. It is stupid to expect an individual to be held accountable criminally for something like this. Why should I spend time in jail or face fines personally because Vendor X couldn't be bothered to employ better programmers or test their stuff. Nevermind there will ALWAYS be vulnerabilities. Or maybe I go to jail because some worker brought in an infected USB photo frame. The only way you can really secure the desktop computer completely from the user is to cut the power cable and give them a pad of paper and a pen.

That said...I think there should be something to "encourage" companies to actually invest the resources in protecting that data, or just to stop collecting it. Seems to me not collecting it is far easier and more viable in many many cases. I agree that there is a problem in the value that data provides the company and their lack of "encouragement" to protect it. The notion of holding already overtaxed administrators criminally liable will only make the problem worse. The field will shrink even further and I imagine many of the competent ones will find work elsewhere not wanting to be a whipping boy under idiotic laws like this.