Are We Ready For a True Data Disaster?

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions how long we can go before a truly catastrophic data disaster strikes. 'The lure of potential profits in the information economy, combined with the apparent ease with which data can be gathered and a lack of regulation, creates a climate of recklessness in which a "data spill" of the scale of the Deepwater Horizon incident seems not just likely, but inevitable.' Witness Google mistakenly emailing potentially sensitive business data to customers of its Local Business Center service, or the 1.5 million Facebook accounts and passwords recently offered up on an underground hacking forum. 'These incidents seem relatively minor, but as companies gather ever more individually identifiable data and cross-reference these databases in new and more innovative ways, the potential for a major catastrophe grows.'"

Comments

Easy and Obvious answer

[modmans2ndcoming]

N-O.

We are never ready for any major disaster. It is silly to think we ever will be given our inability to agree on such major planning initiatives.

Re:Easy and Obvious answer

[Monkeedude1212]

I think more accurately, if we were prepared for it, it wouldn't be a disaster.

Truly catastrophic data disaster...

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'm thinking about powerful solar flares wiping out all magnetic storage on the day side of the earth. Trillions of dollars in lost research data, crippled communications, you know, a catastrophe. Turns out this asshole is talking about compromised facebook pages.

Get a grip, drama queen.

Re:Truly catastrophic data disaster...

[thms]

Now THERE is an argument for SSDs and punch cards if I ever heard one. And paper, there will always be paper.

But the suns magnetic field can't just increase by a few orders of magnitude, so it has to be induced by a solar flare. A hemisphere sized geomagnetic storm however first has to hit the power lines quite hard to produce strong magnetic fields, and then humanity will have other problems.

Re:Truly catastrophic data disaster...

[Yvanhoe]

There is an ongoing data disaster : infinite copyright. We are loosing all the collective memory of the 20th century, save for a few blockbusters and famous books. All these data are stored on fragile medium and are forbidden to distribute in order to save them. Oh, and it has happened already : the musicals of ye old late 19th century were already overprotected by copyright, and many were never "saved" into film in the beginning of the 20th century, not wanting to be pirated...

It's not MY data, it's YOUR data

[petes_PoV]

The first thing we need to do is change some of the descriptions. My data is stored on my computers. If some personal information is stored on your computers, that's your data (even if it refers to me, or other people). And being your data, you are responsible for its safe keeping, its security and (as with oil spills) for cleaning up and making good any lapses it it gets out.

So, for example when a bank says that my identity has been stolen and my bank account drained, what they're really saying is some data they held became insecure and they let an unaurthorised (i.e. not me, or someone I have power of withdrawl to) person take it from them, and that lack of care on their part allowed someone to take money from them (but not from me).

it's only after these sorts of ownership and liability factors are widely accepted and written into law, that we can start to assign responsibility for information that people or organisations hold regarding us. I fully expect that once organisations are deemed liable for any damage or loss that occurs because they lose or fail to secure their data, the problems of identity theft, data loss and security will solve themselves.