[Dataloss] They Take it Seriously? Oh, Sure

[Sean Steele]

Not to sound flippant, but would do we expect them to say?  Spin control is spin control, and PR wonks and in-the-crosshairs execs will continue to say the only thing they can say -- namely, that they take security very seriously. Such is life, right?

What I'd like to see is regulatory and civil penalties levied at the offending organizations, done in a "very serious" way.

--
Sean Steele, CISSP
infoLock Technologies
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-----Original Message-----
From: dataloss-bounces at attrition.org [mailto:dataloss-bounces at attrition.org] On Behalf Of B.K. DeLong
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:20 AM
To: Richard Forno
Cc: dataloss at attrition.org
Subject: Re: [Dataloss] They Take it Seriously? Oh, Sure

That would be an interesting data point to collect - how many
incidents had a corporate wonk saying something to the effect of "very
seriously" or "extremely seriously".

On 1/10/07, Richard Forno <rforno at infowarrior.org> wrote:
> They Take it Seriously? Oh, Sure
> January 9th, 2007 by Dan Gillmor
>
> (I originally wrote this for PR Week magazine.)
>
> Several weeks ago, UCLA acknowledged that some of its computers had been
> hacked. Obeying a state law, it notified more than 800,000 people that their
> personal data, including Social Security numbers, might have ended up in the
> wrong hands.
>
> The fact that the data got loose wasn¹t all that striking. Unfortunately,
> that¹s all too common. What struck me was this statement from a hapless UCLA
> honcho: ³We have a responsibility to safeguard personal information, an
> obligation that we take very seriously.²
>
> When and where have I heard that before? All kinds of times and places,
> actually. It¹s becoming a mantra that means almost nothing.
>
> Try this: Plug ³we take² and ³very seriously² into a Google News or Yahoo
> News search. You¹ll get hundreds of hits, albeit some repeats, where some
> big institution - corporate, educational, government, whatever - makes a
> giant blunder and then issues a ³we take (insert the violated policy) very
> seriously² statement.
>
> < - >
>
> http://citmedia.org/blog/2007/01/09/they-take-it-seriously-oh-sure/
>
>
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