Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

The theft of all the VA information is certainly not good. However, admidst all the uproar, did anybody point out that the information can be found through “legitimate” channels anyway? (Granted, maybe not in one huge chunk, but you can get it.) It’s insanely easy to find anybody, any social security number, any location. And, “Googling” people has become a standard practice. The Feds are reportedly even buying commercial databases to get around those pesky ol’ civil rights and privacy laws.

So, blah-blah, yadda, yadda…what was/is the real problem with the VA theft? Simply put, it was the human factor. We get sloppy when we work with something day after day - be it data, germs or people’s lives. The techie talk over at Slashdot has dissected the technology as well as the pros and cons of telecommuting. One comment in particular sums it up:

…Oops, the laptop that was stolen had the PGP password written on a post-it-note. Or it was the guys’ daughters’ college fund account number. Or they were logged in while working at a coffee shop, got up to use the bathroom, and came back to an empty table. Or a corporate spy stole it once, put on a keylogger, and then steals it again. Ask the police how private your fingerprints are. Does your boss put retina scanners on all company laptops? Can you be sure that nobody with data access would be dumb enough to keep any of that info on their USB drive or a CDR? Are you using strong crypt on your swap space? What do your bosses do to make 100% sure that nobody is printing out information on their home deskjet and leaving the printouts in the recycle bin on thursday morning?…

Lab Chemists and Biologists have horrible cancer incidence rates because they eventually get lax with safety procedures, even though they know better than anyone on the planet how dangerous what they’re doing is. The human brain is set up in such a way that something it encounters every day without visible harm stops registering as “threat” pretty fast. No matter how rigorously you try to follow standard XYZ at the office, people will get lazy when they’re looking over some work in front of the TV.

The bottom line: You can have the best people, processes, and technology possible - but things can (and will) still go awry. And, the answer isn’t to have regular drills or audits. That regularity will become usual practice. I once worked in a office where the fire alarm went off on a regular basis. After about the fourth time in a week, just about everybody in the 11 story building stayed put, since it was “Only the fire alarm.” So, whatever process you have, build in some room for chaos - mix it up a bit and make sure your employees aren’t getting bored (or unhappy). As Sam Neill noted in Jurassic Park, right when everything was going wrong, “Life will find a way.”

Tags: business development, security, human resources