Here is a great video explaining why SOPA and PIPA may harm the open and free Internet and why it will ultimate hurt business. It also won’t stop those people actually stealing intellectual property and your valuable content.
Data Governance for the 21st Century
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Last March I wrote about locking your computer so people don’t steal your data. In the post there’s a great video about one way to do that. It’s a bit severe, but funny.
A lot of us don’t take the time to lock our computers, because we forget or maybe we don’t think anyone will try to steal anything. That’s a false hope, because there are too many people who will steal a laptop, phone or tablet computer, whether they want the data or not.
If you aren’t good about locking your computer, you should lock your files. There are simple ways, like putting a password on a Microsoft Word document or a PDF. Password protecting a file will stop the casual person from getting your data, but it won’t stop anyone with a little sophistication or a criminal. There are too many file cracking tools on the internet to break into password protected files. Most of them are billed as password recovery tools, since this is a legitimate action for people to take.
Leaking information is nothing new and in many cases some organizations do it as part of a strategy. How many times have you heard the line “According to a high-level source …” Sometimes organizations want to leak information to see the reaction before making a real decision.
Unfortunately when information leaks cause major problems, you need to clamp down on them before things get out of hand. The leak could be benign, but it could be catastrophic.
In recent weeks and months, AT&T, Best Buy, Sprint and HP have suffered in varying degrees over leaked memos.
AT&T is currently trying to purchase T-Mobile for $39 billion. AT&T said that this acquisition would create jobs and provide much needed infrastructure improvements so that customers would get better service. They claim that T-Mobile needs to increase coverage of its LTE network and that would improve cellular services. They claim the deal is a win-win for everyone.
This past week an incident occurred at HP that was both embarrassing and very costly. Just prior to announcing its quarterly earnings on May 17, 2011, three memos were leaked from CEO Leo Apotheker that painted a very bleak picture for the company. The memos warned of upcoming cost-cutting measures for the company that pointed to a rough few quarters ahead. Apotheker told executives to “watch every penny and minimize all hiring” and said the firm’s current workforce plans were “unaffordable given the pressures on our business.”
The memos were leaked to news organizations that promptly reported the stories. As a result of the information, HP’s stock price dropped 5%. Given their market cap of around $80 billion, that’s a $4 billion oops. Apotheker told CNBC that he would find out how the memos made their way to the media. “It is very unfortunate that these things happen and we will try to get to the bottom of this,” Apotheker said. “But I have full confidence in the team that I am working with and we’ll continue to execute.”
Today is Tax Day in the United States, although this year we have a reprieve until April 18, because of Emancipation Day celebrated in the District of Columbia. Taxes go to many things, just as revenue dollars do in businesses. They help pay for roads, bridges, national defense, police, firefighters, and a million other things. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of funds going toward protecting people’s personal data.
Just in the last few weeks there have been a large number of data breaches from the US federal and state governments. The issues with all these incidents are the same. Your and my personal information is not adequately protected, but the reasons are not the same. Some were database hacks, some were lost or stolen PCs and many were negligent behavior. Whether the negligence came out of ignorance or a lack of following process and procedure is irrelevant. The outcomes were the same.
Here is a sampling of government data breaches in the last few weeks:
- IRS hit with theft of nonprofits’ Identities
- SSA exposed SSNs, names, birth dates for 36,000 people
- Texas data breach exposed 3.5 million records
- Oklahoma State Department of Health has laptop stolen with 133,000 medical records
- Veterans’ personal data exposed by an employee at a VA medical center