Additional opportunities

DeAnne Toto

It seems you can’t go a day without hearing news of a breach in which thousands or more records containing the personal information of individuals have been released.

According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, 79 breaches have been made public this year as of July 24, 2015. The most recent one as of press time was the hacking of Toronto-based Ashley Madison, reported July 19, affecting 40 million records. The company has not revealed the nature of the personal information that was compromised, but the situation likely has many people sweating, as the dating website’s tag line is “Life’s short. Have an affair.”

While this breach was malicious in nature, many of them are not. According to the Verizon “2015 Data Breach Investigations Report,” 29.4 percent of breaches resulted from “miscellaneous errors.” Crimeware accounted for 25.1 percent of breaches, while insider misuse accounted for 20.6 percent. Just over 15 percent of breaches were the result of physical theft or loss.

According to the Verizon report, system administrators were most often responsible for miscellaneous errors made by internal staff. They were the prime actors in more than 60 percent of incidents, representing “a significant volume of breaches and records,” Verizon says.

Records and information management firms already help their clients safeguard information against breaches; but, according to Ross Federgreen’s article “Be Prepared,” beginning on page 24, they may have another sales opportunity surrounding this threat.

Federgreen’s company, CSR Professional Services Inc., offers the CSR Breach Reporting Service and the CSR Readiness Suite for resale. The company says the CSR Readiness Suite “gives your small to medium-sized customers easy access to the data life cycle assessment solution based on enterprise-level consulting, coupled with the award-winning CSR Breach Reporting Service.”

When I interviewed Access CEO Rob Alston for the cover story in the Winter 2015 issue of SDB, he told me his company offers the CSR Data Breach Reporting Service, adding that adjacent services like this one present a growth opportunity for his company. He said Access believes “compelling” growth opportunities remain “in working with our clients in providing other valued support and management services in all aspects of the life cycle of information.”