Ease Of Access Is Not A Virtue

At least when you’re talking about personal data. Here’s a post from FTC counsel Lesley Fair about the trouble that a company called Lookout stumbled into when an employee hacked into Lookout’s database of customer information. I won’t repeat the post here, but in short, the employee obtained the URL for Lookout’s secure Web page at a company Webinar. With that information, coupled with easy to guess changes to the URL, shoe got access to the entire database. In our digital age, data security is the issue. Ask Sony if you don’t believe me. If you collect personal data, first ask yourself if you really need to. And then ask an expert if you are doing everything you can to protect it. Lesley Fair is a very nice person. But you don’t want her sending you a subpoena if you can help it.