The Bleeding Edge: Security, Privacy and Data Protection – The Three Headed Horseman

Enterprises today face a multitude of challenges related to the privacy and protection of corporate, consumer, employee and partner data. Globalization of data, centralized technology architectures, outsourcing, offshoring, smartsourcing, conflicting cultural expectations, government security concerns, national trade issues, distribution and supply chain demands, regulatory and contractual requirements -- all continue to have an impact on the corporate use of personal data and organizational data. Organizations should recognize that personal data is an increasingly valuable and complex asset requiring strategic decisions to effectively meet both the challenges and the opportunities of the emerging global information economy. The need for privacy and security fundamentally comes down to the human need for safety. Privacy and security are about who remains in power: the user or the ones who know things about the user.

We've been attacking this problem for decades with traditional solutions like virus scanners, firewalls, spam blockers, honeypots and intrusion detectors. But each of these has been only a partial solution, for these five reasons:

1. Solutions like virus scanners and spam blockers are after-the-fact approaches.
2. Honeypots only blunt an attack and enhance the ability to isolate worms so that they can be removed and defended against in the …