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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?
I've got a better idea. Ban the collection of personal information beyond the time required for the transaction. I don't but it that companies somehow need to store all this info on people especially years after the transaction has occurred. If you are going to be light on them when they lose it, then be heavy on what they can keep.
Well what about long-term services like Life Insurance? A service like that would need to keep your Name, Birthday, Social Security Number, address, next of kin, etc until you died and someone collected. And what about Banks and Loan offices?
A friend of mine got a notice from his life insurance firm saying that a laptop was stolen that probably had his records on it. Why it would be on a flippin LAPTOP I have no idea, something like that should be a server only accessible from the company's encrypted network (but I digress).
I could also see the benefit of some stores keeping some light data on you (name, address, phone) so they can contact you but I think they should get rid of your credit card info after X days/weeks.
In all, it's a mixed bag of blame. Personally I think the government and law enforcement should take Identify Theft a lot more seriously, with major penalties against these fraudulent jerks.
A friend of mine got a notice from his life insurance firm saying that a laptop was stolen that probably had his records on it. Why it would be on a flippin LAPTOP I have no idea, something like that should be a server only accessible from the company's encrypted network (but I digress).
$10 says someone was either creating top-line reports or other such nonsense based on spreadsheets full of live data, and they brought it home/outside of the office to continue working on it past business hours.
I can't even tell you how many times I've seen people in insurance companies take live data home with them so they can whip up statistical reporting. People don't follow IT protocol when it becomes inconvenient for them to do so. (i.e. staying late at the office vs going home & working there.)
The Economist ran a report pointing out that companies had whined at length about how Sarbanes-Oxley was crippling their business, but they did an investigation and found that the companies in question were doing as well as before or better.
(The Economist is absolutely gung-ho to the point of stupidity about free markets, so I don't think they have some sort of corporate agenda in saying so.)
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Actually wrong.
The first step is to financially ruin and have real "pound me in the ass" prison terms for the executive staff that cut the IT departments budget to increase security.
If the CEO has the fear of being raped by bubba while the CTO is told "you're next pretty boy" They will quit spending money on their company BMW's and office remodels and actually give the IT departments the funding they need to have the staff and hardware to do their FUCKING job.
Do I seem a bit jaded?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.