Your Data Privacy Day: 1 of 3
Jennifer LeClaire - January 16th, 2012
How Private Is Your Data, Really?
How private is your data? If you are like most people—and even many corporations—you can’t offer a solid answer. Yet one person’s lack of knowledge about data privacy can send a ripple effect through the world as malicious hackers work to steal valuable information from individuals, companies and governments.
Lumension is taking an active role in the January 28 Data Privacy Day, working to help raise awareness of the issue and how to combat it. Veteran technology journalist Jennifer LeClaire caught up with Lumension CEO Pat Clawson to discuss the state of data privacy in part one of this three-part series on data privacy.
LeClaire: What’s the state of data privacy today compared to five years ago? How big is the challenge?
Clawson:
When you look at the state of data privacy today compared to five years ago there is an argument that says, “Well, nothing has changed.” Then there’s another side that says, “At some level people are more aware.” Either way, there is a consistency of thinking that says, “This could happen to somebody else, but not me.”
LeClaire: So it seems people somehow think they are immune from the problem.
Clawson:
Yes, but the issue of data privacy impacts the individual, a corporation’s intellectual property and even national security. Data privacy issues have become so severe that an entire industry has been built around threats to the individual. Think of it in terms of identity theft. Companies like LifeLock didn’t exist six years ago. Now, companies like LifeLock are growing because of the rapid rise of identity theft.
LeClaire: And it’s happening not by stealing purses or breaking into corporate offices, but by hacking accounts…
Clawson:
Right. There’s nothing really new about data privacy. But when we think of theft we typically think of physical theft. Somebody walks into a store, steals something and leaves. Often it requires some sort of physical damage to break in and steal. Nowadays, data thieves break in and take something of value, but you don’t know they got in and took anything because they only took an electronic copy.
Data privacy issues are no longer cloak and dagger with microfilm, photographs and Xerox copies. Today, people are able to electronically mine data at a very high speed—and it can happen from any computer anywhere in the world. It’s a mental migration. We’ve figured out how to deal with theft for thousands of years in the physical world but we haven’t yet done so well in the digital world because often we just don’t know that it’s gone.
LeClaire: Beyond modern technology, what other factors are contributing to these challenges?
Clawson:
Ignorance. Maybe data privacy issues are falling on deaf ears because nobody really cares. That’s why I keep trying to tie the value of intellectual property beyond that of the individual to that of the viability of our nation as a whole.
I spoke with a guy with the NSA last year and he said, “Every time somebody travels overseas and you plug your laptop into a hotel network, your laptop is being replicated on average two times per week. There is somebody that’s completely tapping everything you have.”
Data is being siphoned at an alarming rate now. Valuable information that resides on your is being stolen within hours and minutes by someone who needs extra money. We all think that because we created it and nobody knows about it, that it’s safe. But it’s not. And our future viability as a leading global innovator is seriously threatened.
LeClaire: We’ve talked a lot about the challenges around Data Privacy. What role does Data Privacy Day play in combatting the challenge?
Clawson:
Data Privacy Day raises awareness. It talks about the issue and that’s an important first step. If it were up to me, I’d say we need to talk about it more. We need to have national figures parlay National Data Privacy Day into something of a more consistent drumbeat.
People don’t yet understand the severity of data privacy risks to our long-term viability as a nation.
LeClaire: What—and how serious—are the consequences of data privacy breaches in today’s economy, right here and now?
Clawson:
Company executives still haven’t wrapped their brains around the possibility of everything they worked so hard for getting stolen and shipped to a foreign country where people can just change logos and manufacture products without ever investing a dime into R&D.
What made the U.S. great for so many years is that we’ve driven innovation. And if a great idea was born someplace else, they often came here to make it a reality. But that’s not going to be the case anymore as the world becomes more financially competitive. So whatever we have here, we’ve got to protect with everything we’ve got.
LeClaire: And it starts with the individual…
Clawson:
Let’s go back to the example of data privacy at the individual level. Here, it is generally identity theft. It’s personal to you; it’s a violation; it’s grand theft identity. Recouping from the damage is both time-consuming and costly.
At a corporate level, sometimes it’s damage to the bottom line because your ideas have been stolen and manufactured cheaper by someone else. Sometimes it’s damage to your brand image because your customers and the media get wind of the theft and your name is forever tied to corporate espionage.
Nationally, it puts all those things that we care so much about at risk. If governments have the ability to penetrate our networks, know what we know, and steal our latest and greatest innovations, we’re in trouble. From so many perspectives, we are significantly further along than anybody else in the world. What happens if we lose that advantage? What happens if all our advancements are immediately erased by a country where the cost of manufacturing is less than one-tenth of ours?
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Over 48% of IT Directors say that mobile devices represent the greatest network security threat.
The Privacy issue that still bothers me is the disconnect between the consumer view of their PII being protected for them by the corporation when in fact the corporation despite potential brand reputational loss only protests it’s IP not it’s customers PII. Governments need to step in and legislate to provide for mandatory breach notification, ID theft protection and fines for breaches in excess of the cost of the implementation of good data security policy, practices and technology.
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[...] How Private is Your Data, Really? Lumension Blog [...]
[...] This is part two in a series of three on data privacy. Read Pat’s first interview here. [...]
[...] is part three in a series of three on data privacy. Read Pat’s first interview here and second interview [...]
[...] is part three in a series of three on data privacy. Read Pat’s first interview here and second interview [...]
[...] How Private is Your Data, Really? Lumension Blog [...]