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Data Theft Hit New Heights in 2007 - Bring On the Clients |
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Written by Stew
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Thursday, 03 January 2008 |
 Welcome to 2008. The celebrations are over, the turkey is finally finished off. So I sat and reflected on what a year 2007 had been, and it appears I wasn't alone. In the last few weeks I'm sure you've seen plenty of 2007 reviews. One article that caught my eye had a rather negative tale to tell, and one that I fear will still be with us in 2008. 2007 saw more data stolen or lost than ever before. This may not come as a surprise, after all we have more data as people than ever before and most of us are still coming to grips with storing and securing it. Wired News found that businesses and corporations are still at threat and that the threat is growing.
Businesses across the globe now use firewalls and encryption techniques of ever growing complexity, spending millions if not billions each year to try and make their data secure. These efforts nevertheless are failing. According to Wired:
Foley's group lists more than 79 million records reported compromised in the United States through Dec. 18. That's a nearly fourfold increase from the nearly 20 million records reported in all of 2006.
I can understand that banks and credit card companies, big business in general and government agencies are getting tough and beefing up their security in response to the 'hacker' threat, but also considered the man in the street. Regular Joes like myself are also at threat, and not always from a character from the Matrix sitting in a darkened room hacking away at at my meager security applications. Occasionally a guy or girl like myself will simply loose our data from pure and plain stupidity. Ever lost your laptop, or dropped it on the floor to realize your hard drive ain't never waking up again? I'm not owning up these crimes, at least not here, but trust me it does happen.
Either way, if your talking enterprise or starbucks it seems data can be damn hard to keep hold of. Is there a solution?
If you ask me we have to get away from the idea of having sensitive data stored locally. The only true method of making our data more secure is by simply keeping it locked up in very safe place. Yes, you've guessed it. The server. Be it cloud computing or a cool new thin client PC with all the trimmings or simply a Zonbu, data is safer on the server than in your car, bag or bedroom.
Ask anyone in the Thin Client industry and they'll tell you that this has been around since the year dot. The difference is that networking and internet bandwidth have improved tremendously in recent years and thin clients have come along way.
I predict that client computing in its various guises will be an area of outstanding growth in 2008. Will it be enough to stem the data theft tide? Time will tell.
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