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Cybersecurity and Privacy: A Country of Mushrooms re: Recent Major Data Breaches

Posted on February 17, 2015 by Dissent

Shamoil T. Shipchandler of Bracewell & Giuliani LLP has a great commentary about how our country is doing on cybersecurity and privacy. It  begins:

When it comes right down to it, we are about as bad at cybersecurity as Twitter’s CFO is at Twitter or North Korea is at coming up with new political slogans to commemorate its 70th anniversary.

As Shipchandler notes, throwing more money at the problem is not sufficient:

Anyway, it’s not like just increasing spending on cybersecurity is helping, either. Take the beleaguered U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs, for example, which last year “spent $11,700 per employee on IT, or twice the average amount of the private sector,” yet “failed its annual cyber-security audit for the 16th consecutive year.”

Let that sink in for a moment. Sixteen consecutive years. sixteen. Seriously. The VA was failing at cybersecurity when Will Smith was still Getting’ Jiggy Wit It. Not even the Washington Redskins have failed for sixteen consecutive years. (Here’s something terrific: The team just dared to ask its [remaining] fans what they would like to see in a new stadium. In a shocking turn of events, “a winning team” was not listed as an option.)

And yet we continue to cede information to third parties that strips away our most basic privacy protections.

The whole column is worth reading on The National Law Review. I think he’s really hit on a great metaphor for us:

As a prosecutor in a securities fraud case, I once had a witness testify that the bad guy treated him and his fellow investors like “mushrooms,” i.e., he “kept them in the dark and fed them manure.” Okay, he didn’t actually say “manure,” but this is a family blog (if only for kids with insomnia). But we are all mushrooms when it comes to data privacy. Think about it. Do you think about how your information is protected when you swipe your credit card? Do you know how your doctor’s office secures your personal health history? Or are you in the dark?

So maybe “a country of mushrooms” isn’t the worst slogan in the world, if it helps us pay attention to the privacy that we cede and the cyber threats that we ignore.

It sure beats a strong wind of fish farming.

Read more on The National Law Review.

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