Another Reason to Care About Security

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Another Reason to Care About Security

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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Points: 734418
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November 20, 2018 at 9:05 pm

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Another Reason to Care About Security

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Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1003853 More actions · Answer 1

From the article:

I also know that consumers can be emotional and look to leave a service, like a mobile phone provider, after a breach, to move to a new provider.

I know that data breaches will happen to eventually every provider but what else would you expect customers to be after a breach? Understanding? Unconcerned? Forgiving?

I don't believe that reaction to a demonstrated fault is simply "emotional".

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Jeff Mlakar SSCrazy Points: 2879 More actions · Answer 2

I am fascinated about this topic and conflicted about how it will all play out. Breaches are bad but the fundamental problem is that organizations are collecting so much data about people that it doesn't matter if there is a breach (there will be) - their normal business operations will exploit that data for profit. I'm all for profit but not the way it is currently done with data collection.

I really hope people become more aware of: how valuable their data is, how much can be discerned from simple data sets and cross referencing, the fact that they give up what amounts to billion dollar industry for points or fake money / rewards. I put everything on a credit card because it is immensely easy but I miss the days of paying in cash. I don't want every single purchase I make to be recorded, distributed, analyzed, etc. by 3rd parties.

I also tend to think that technology workers like us (the people reading this site) should be at the forefront of these issues. Who better to explain them?

The fundamental problem is the data collection and our willingness to trade it for cheap perks. I don't think top level down regulation will be successful (it may or may not). My preference is for a grassroots movement among the population to decide we want to go in a very different direction...one towards respecting our privacy.

Thom A SSC Guru Points: 99126 More actions · Answer 3

I think the thing that I really care about when i hear a company I use, or I'm looking to, has a data breach is how much that put into mitigating that breach. If a company that i used was breached because of poor workmanship or standards (open to injection, website has a default Admin password, etc) I'm going to very quickly move away from that company. On the other hand, a company might make a huge amount of effort to stop a breach, and yet they suffer one. I'm far less inclined to stop using the services of that company then if I know that they made a large amount of effort to stop it happening in the first place.

You're not wrong, every company is going to suffer a breach at some time (it might be large, it might be small). Even something as simple as sending a letter to the wrong customer is considered a breach. The important part, in my opinion, is how that company handles said breach and what actions they took to stop it from happening in the first place. Those that can''t evidence or don't practice good data security aren't only going to suffer a breach, but they're going to suffer them multiple times and that's going to be when their reputation is really going to plummet.

Thom~

Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
Larnu.uk

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 734418 More actions · Answer 4

I think it's hard to decide how to handle this. T-Mobile has a breach, you get upset and move to O2, Verizon, ATT, etc. The thing is, those companies might be worse at security. We don't have any good way of judging this, and like Thom notes, everyone will get breached at some point. Security just isn't mature enough, and humans are a big problem still.

I'd like to think I would stop and think about the issue, what happened, how the company handled things, and then decide what to do.