NORTH AMERICA DATA BREACHES: NewsFactor Business | Data Breaches: A Global Dilemma

Data Breaches: A Global Dilemma
By Phillip Britt
February 19, 2008 7:05AM

"Security is only 25 percent technology," says John Pironti, chief information risk strategist for Getronics, a provider of IT security services and training. "You have to create a culture of security." That culture doesn't exist at all in developing countries where people and companies rely on vendors to tell them how to secure data.

While reporting laws and an insatiable appetite by U.S. consumers for privacy-related news keep data breaches in this country on many people's radar, it's not just a problem in America. Recent widely reported data breaches in the U.K. and Canada highlight the global nature of the problem. In late November, the British government admitted to the loss ofcomputer disks containing detailed personal information on 25 million of the country's citizens as well as an unknown number of bank account identifiers. Some analysts described this incident in published reports as potentially the most significant privacy breach of the digital age.

At about the same time, reports from Canada released information about potential data breaches from lost laptops and from hackedcomputers.

Zeroing In on Toronto

For example, Toronto has one of the highest incidents of laptop theft, according to John Livingston, CEO of Absolute Software, a company that provides software to identify the location of laptops, much like LoJack can identify the location of a car.

"There is a lot of petty crime in the Toronto area," Livingston says. "We have more stolen laptops [based on the company's own reports] in Toronto on a prorata basis than anywhere else. Crime rings here target specific buildings."

For the targeted building, the crime ring members will pose as a cleaning crew to get access, and then they will remove laptops and other materials from offices, according to Livingston. "Laptops are easy targets."

However, many of the crimes never get much notice outside of the local area, he says, adding that notification laws lag behind those of the U.S. That is also the case in many other parts of the world, according to Livingston and other security experts.

The experts agree that the type and amount of breaches in the rest of the world are on par with those experienced in the U.S., though not as many reports of these incidents are released outside of the countries where they occur.

Keeping Score

"The U.S. is much better at tabulating incidents of security breaches. It's much more difficult to tally up incidents overseas," says Ron Knode, the director of global security architecture and design engineering forComputer Sciences Corp.'s Global security Solutions organization.

The biggest problem with overseas security breaches as well as those in this country is the loss of physical media containing sensitive material, says Knode. "It's not cyber-ingenuity; people just got careless." (continued...)