Privacy Pros Leaving Consumers Vulnerable
By Guest Blogger, Mike Spinney, The Ponemon Institute
I grow more and more convinced that, while the issues that keep us busy generate headlines that have migrated from the legal journals and trade publications into the mainstream media, the basic need for education among consumers becomes more urgent. Lately the Wall Street Journal has published a steady stream of insightful articles related to digital privacy, and data breaches are reported in local newspapers wherever and whenever they occur, but in my experience talking with regular folks, the lessons contained in these articles don’t seem to be having any meaningful effect.
Whenever I’ve had the privilege of standing before an audience of regular folks, the questions I hear over and over again are related to information so basic that in my professional interactions they don’t even come up. “Is it safe to send a check through the mail?” “Should I pay with cash, credit, or debit?” “How can I tell the difference between a fake email and a legitimate one?”
I’ve heard a lot of people scoff at the simplicity of these questions. Surely we’ve moved well beyond the question of spam and phishing, right? We’ve got bigger questions to address today, like HIPAA and HITECH; like RFID and biometrics; like behaviorally targeted advertising; like Mass 201 CMR 17…
Security Awareness Program (Lacking)
Security awareness programs (data security education) are drastically lacking in American corporations, and it is leading to an increase in data breach and workplace identity theft.
Look at these numbers about employee data security just released by the Ponemon Institute. They appeared in a post by the Ponemon Institute’s Founder, Larry Ponemon (the quote is theirs, the emphasis, mine):
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