Late Friday, a story emerged on the wires about 800,000 applicants information (including Social Security Numbers) being stolen from The Gap, a large US based retailer. See link below.
Knowledge Infusion works with clients on a daily basis to help them get BTP (Beyond The Paranoia) of not letting data outside of their shops; a story like this doesn't help. Before you go and lock your file cabinets and turn off all electronic access to anything, a few data points:
The incidents that get this type of exposure are very rare and in 99.3% of organizations, never happen.
Software as a Service applications are working in almost every industry worldwide without issue; lets not put our industry back on its heels because of a few incidents.
Innovation and TCO being built into software today has a future of open access, social collaboration and trust; once again, lets keep that going as we will need it. We are not all bad apples.
I have a feeling that this story is not over. Taleo (a leading Talent Management vendor) even put out a press release on Friday saying "it wasn't us".
Stay tuned for more but know that amongst our 160 enterprise clients, this is very rare and should not change your overall technology strategy in the least.
Another infusion of knowledge...
