In today's computerized world, loss of confidential information is far too common. If you look at a good list of personal information data breaches , you will quickly see that a breach occurs almost every day, and that's just in the United States!
Almost everybody knows that databases get hacked and laptops get stolen, both of which can expose all kinds of information about customers and employees. Information is frequently lost due to malicious intentions. So security is audited, laptops are encrypted, and a lot of companies take steps to ensure that this type of exposure doesn't happen. Data is still exposed, but many companies actively try to prevent it.
I'll start with a story. I know a company that sells a customer-management solution that once had a demo site, with demo data, which potential customers could play with. After a software upgrade, the demo database was no longer valid, so one of the programmers made a copy of the real production database and put it on the demo site. It made sense to the programmer at the time, since he just wanted to get the demo working again. It was some time before somebody realized that the customers, invoices, payments, and quotes were real, and that anybody could access them. Luckily, the data contained nothing that could damage the customers, but it could have potentially hurt the company, in the right hands.
If you look at the list of data breaches, you'll see that this type of exposure is common. An employee might post customer information to a Web site, mail an invoice to the wrong address, or throw employee files in a dumpster. Sometimes it's because the employee is unaware that the information exists, sometimes the employee doesn't understand the significance of the data, and sometimes the employee might just be lazy.
In this world of identity theft and fraud, everybody has to do their part to handle data in an appropriate manner. Every person who handles data should be aware of its significance and their responsibilities to keep it safe.



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