Hackers get bum rap for corporate America's digital delinquency

This is good stuff...

If Phil Howard's calculations prove true, by year's end the 2 billionth personal record -- some American's social-security or credit-card number, academic grades or medical history -- will become compromised, and it's corporate America, not rogue hackers, who are primarily to blame.

Howard and Erickson also found that:

• Malicious intrusions by hackers make up a minority (31 percent) of 550 confirmed incidents between 1980 and 2006; 60 percent were attributable to organizational mismanagement such as missing or stolen hardware; the balance of 9 percent was due to unspecified breaches.
• Likely as a result of California's law and similar legislation adopted by other states, the number of reported incidents more than tripled in 2005 and 2006 (424 cases) compared to the previous 24 years (126 cases).
• The education sector, primarily colleges and universities, amounted to less than 1 percent of all lost records, but accounted for 30 percent of all reported incidents.

Article here more related material at www.wiareport.org