Remember the before and after photos that they have on those diet ads on late night TV? Information security has it's own "before and after" photos. For example, do you remember when ChoicePoint CISO Richard "Dick" Baich told us that the stolen PII data wasn't that big a deal? Well, that was the candid "before" shot. The "after photo" in our little analogy would of course be ChoicePoint CEO standing before congress and apologizing over the tragedy. Like the airbrushing and softening done in the weight loss ad, this apology has been "dressed up" to make the change appear great when really little or no change has gone on in reality. The change is entirely a fiction created in the photos. Is it fair to say this? After all, maybe ChoicePoint really had a change of heart; maybe they were visited by three spirits in the middle of the night and they have woken up to find that there's still time to reform their terrible ways. Unfortunately, no. To quote the article:
Smith and Sanford said they were opposed to legislation banning the sale of Social Security numbers, arguing that the sale of personal information was important to fight fraud and assist law enforcement in its investigations.
So, they just don't want to get regulated and they want to keep doing business as usual. Apparently, Smith's "soul searching" is light on the "soul" and heavy on the "seaching" (at least as it pertains to searching for a way to get the attention to pass with as little cost as possible.) Sickening.
Posted by Ed at March 17, 2005 11:00 AM