Today, I continue to blog from the Black Hat Convention, a network security conference being held this week in Las Vegas.

There was an interesting comment made in one of the sessions I attended (Smashing the Future for Fun and Profit): “How do you put a value on someone’s identity?”

In other words, if a company needed to compensate a consumer for the loss of their personal data through a breach, how to you calculate what it cost the consumer?

Society understands how to clean up in life – “Clean up on aisle 9!” But clean-up in the cyberworld isn’t so easy. On the web, convenience is key. Security makes the web less convenient, which leads many to wonder – especially amid recent high-profile breaches – are companies being as secure as they can and should be? Is our ability to maintain maximum security online compromised when that security is outsourced?

Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, the safest bet is to assume a breach is imminent. And the easiest way to clean up a mess is to minimize the potential damage – If you think a child might tip over a glass of milk, put it in a plastic container and only fill it halfway.

More on this in the weeks ahead. For now, back to Black Hat.

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