Identity Theft: Unmonitored Data May Be Online and Susceptible to Theft -- Identity Theft Expert and Speaker on Personal Security
A widely televised and quoted personal security and identity theft expert said unknown quantities of computerized information are open to theft in an age of everyday online search.


    /Public Sec. and Government News Articles/ - BOSTON, MA, June 04, 2007 - (IDTheftSecurity.com) Research has suggested that industry has not done enough to secure sensitive data that resides on enterprise networks. According to Robert Siciliano, a widely televised and quoted personal security and identity theft expert, this and other news again raises question regarding how to protect unknown quantities of computerized information in an age of everyday online search.

"Identity thieves continue to have a vast treasure trove of data at their disposal," said Siciliano. "We need a concerted effort to ferret out and secure the untold amounts of unsecured data that otherwise threaten to become thieves' bounty after the next massive data breach."

CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com and a member of the Bank Fraud & IT Security Report's editorial board, Siciliano leads Fortune 500 companies and their clients in workshops that explore consumer education solutions for security issues. A longtime identity theft speaker and author of "The Safety Minute: 01," he has discussed data security and consumer protection on CNBC, on NBC's "Today Show," FOX News, and elsewhere.

Research suggests that confidential information remains largely unprotected online at most organizations. A report by Enterprise Strategy Group and based on a survey of 227 Information Security professionals at North American public and private organizations has found one-fourth of respondents rating their organizations as "fair" or "poor" with regards to procedures and policies for confidential data.

On May 29, Computer Technology Review (CTR) reported that unmonitored and, perhaps, undocumented records in the form of Word and Excel or with file extensions such as .PST and .PDF comprise about 70 percent to 80 percent of organizations' data.

Much of this data-at-rest, according to the article in CTR, resides on individual computers' hard drives, susceptible to theft. Sometimes this data is posted online, and, in a tangentially related development, according to an April 30 article in The Money Times, multiple state governments have made moves to make documents previously unsearchable available to Google users.

"We are dancing on a fine line," said Siciliano. "The needs of the Freedom of Information Act must be facilitated, but the need to protect information unsuitable, from a security standpoint, for online search is also a priority."

Readers may view a CNBC video clip, which features Siciliano discussing the perils of data security (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gZB6ZgZiUc).

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Robert Siciliano
IDTheftSecurity.com
CEO
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Boston, MA
United States 02215
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