Bart Porter writes:
Days ago, before the tale of a mysterious piano that appeared on a secluded sandbar in Miami’s Biscayne Bay went viral and everyone from condo residents to the U.S. Coast Guard were questioning where it came from, I had a similar question in mind: How does somebody lose a grand piano?
Grand pianos aren’t easy to lose. My brother-in-law who owns a music store in Celina, Ohio, assures me of that. They’re hard enough to move, much less misplace on a sandbar in the middle of a Florida bay.
Since I’m not in the music business, my question naturally flowed in another direction more pertinent to Redemtech’s interests. How does a business enterprise lose a bunch of data? It certainly must be easier to lose important data on a portable device than to misplace a Steinway, or so dozens of news reports each year would indicate.
Read more on (re)Blog. I can think of a few readers who will be unhappy with the reference to the Ponemon $204/record breach cost estimate, but so be it….
Organizations don’t like acknowledging that data is missing, and worse, some haven’t even noticed it’s gone yet. Grand pianos in the bay are a lot easier to spot than a laptop thrown into a closet whose absence might never be noticed. When devices are taken out of commission, unless there are processes in place to erase the data with an auditable, verifiable process, data IS in danger and the organization IS at risk. Data has life long after a device has been abandoned unless an organization is diligent. Start looking in the closets – you’ll find data breaches ripe for the picking.