Time for change

After a week of political uncertainty we now have a new government, a historic moment of political compromise. It will be a time of change and a time of spending reviews. There will be cuts to public spending, there has to be because it is unsustainable and you definitely cannot borrow your way out of debt so something must give.

My only worry is that it will be cuts that are deemed low hanging fruit and the significance or importance is not appreciated compared to a quick budgetary win. As always it is down to perception of what is important to the individual making the cuts and there will be some difficult decisions to make however this should in no way compromise our security or information assurance. Data is precious, it is valuable, I am mindful of the average cost of a record for a data breech and also how valuable data is to the criminal world.

There were some interesting facts presented at the Ecrime Congress in London this year about how much personal data is worth, information about individuals that is being bought and sold around the globe. Credit card details, addresses, bank details, information we all hold dear is being traded.

My overarching fear is that with the exabytes of data that the last government harvested will become vulnerable unless security measures are kept and tightened. This is a difficult task in a climate of prudence and austerity where it would be easier to cancel the security project and save a bit of money now and worry about data loss later which would be a bigger crime than the wasting of billions to date has been.

So by all means cut the waste but let’s not cut back on security, especially when it comes to the data they have about you and me!