Woodrow Hartzog and I wrote a new article about data breaches called “Data Vu: Why Breaches Involve the Same Stories Again and Again.” We discuss how data breaches involve the same old mistakes and how we must break the cycle. We begin:
In the classic comedy Groundhog Day, protagonist Phil, played by Bill Murray, asks “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” In this movie, Phil is stuck reliving the same day over and over, where the events repeat in a continual loop, and nothing he does can stop them. Phil’s predicament sounds a lot like our cruel cycle with data breaches.
Every year, organizations suffer more data spills and attacks, with personal information being exposed and abused at alarming rates. While Phil eventually figured out how to break the loop, we’re still stuck: the same types of data breaches keep occurring with the same plot elements virtually unchanged.
Like Phil eventually managed to do, we must examine the recurring elements that allow data breaches to happen and try to learn from them. Common plotlines include human error, unnecessary data collection, consolidated storage and careless mistakes. Countless stories involve organizations that spent a ton of money on security and still ended up breached. Only when we learn from these recurring stories can we make headway in stopping the cycle.
Head over to Scientific American to read the rest of the article.
The article draws from some of the ideas in my book with Hartzog, Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It (Oxford University Press, 2022).
