The Public – Completely Desensitized to Breaches
Over the weekend, I came across this article, How to Stop Worrying About Every “Mega” Password Breach That Comes Along. Now, to be fair, if users actually read the article — it’s not as bad as the title depicts. But in a world where people read titles and maybe a meta description if they’re feeling ambitious — a title like this can easily skew readers into believing data breaches are either being sensationalized or are not important. Either way, it’s a problem and data breaches are not to be taken lightly.
However, it’s an uphill battle to maintain public concern for a topic that, as of late, has become a normal news story. The sensation has been removed. Meaning, the public has begun tuning it out because it’s just more gibber-gabber that they’ve heard 100 times already. This in itself should be highly alarming considering data breaches may include email addresses, passwords, or worse — personal identifiable data. If we as the public continue to disregard the latest security breaches, then who are we to demand better from businesses who are supposed to be securing our data, to begin with? We cannot, without being giant hypocrites.
Taking Control
When was the last time you changed your email, online banking, or login password? When was the last time you saved a user name and password to your browser so you didn’t have to remember it every time? What about your email address — have you checked to ensure it has not been compromised? Now, what about your credit? Have you pulled a free report recently to confirm there hasn’t been any irregular activity? And what about those bank statements — are you checking them to confirm your purchases are all legitimate?
Long story short, security breaches should be taken seriously, and the public needs to hold themselves accountable for their role in their online data security.
