If I say Equifax, you likely don’t think of credit reports first. Data breach comes to mind even if you weren’t one of the almost 50% of Americans affected by the stolen data. This interesting information came to us from Next Gov in their article, “Hacking is Inevitable, So It’s Time To Assume Our Data Will Be Stolen.”
If recent hacking attacks have taught us anything, it’s that data breaches are a part of life. Many believe it is time to plan for what happens after our data is stolen, instead of worrying about when and if it will be.
According to Rahul Telang, professor of information systems at Carnegie Mellon University, a determined hacker is probably going to succeed regardless of preventive measures, yet there’s far too little focus on limiting the damage. He suggests measures that include automatic credit freezes, and wherever possible data could be aggregated to protect individual identities and private information. Government intervention may be necessary, as consumers are vulnerable to credit raters’ mistakes but have little choice but to accept their role in finance.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
