Is privacy, information theft, and data breaches are big issues today?

You bet. It is evident from the fact that many of the leading newspapers such as New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal are carrying out news items and their own investigations into the privacy issues and data breaches. Indian news papers are nor far behind, Times Of India reports such cases on a regular basis, even Dilbert is getting into this.

US Government is also working on new legislations that enforces more privacy related controls. It is also  encouraging to see that Congressmen are more concerned about privacy breaches. The recent Facebook privacy issue caught the attention of Congressmen Edward Markey and Joe Barton, the two Congressmen have asked Facebook to answer questions regarding the Wall Street Journal report.

Corporations are also becoming more concerned about privacy and information theft. In a recent survey of 800 senior executives at global firms, commissioned by Kroll, it was found that information theft was the most-reported form of fraud, with 27.3% of those surveyed reporting an incident of information theft in the previous 12 months, compared to 18% who reported information theft over the previous 12 months in 2009. It was also found that for the first time data theft has surpassed physical theft.

The complete report is here.

As information security practitioners what can we do to help? This calls for better monitoring, new detective/preventive controls and more improvements in the areas of people, process and technology to tackle this problem.