Category: data storage

As incredible as it may seem, people have been getting insurance for thousands of years. The Code of Hammurabi, written in 1755 B.C., is the first known legal text to describe the concept of insurance. Today, people and companies alike purchase insurance to protect themselves from financial loss. It’s a way to manage the risk that we experience in everyday life, such as auto insurance for car accidents or health insurance for when we get sick. Companies purchase insurance to manage the risk of running a business, like protection in the event of a fire with commercial property insurance or a workplace accident with workers’ compensation insurance. We use insurance to hedge against the risk of significant loss. These days, companies have been buying and exercising their cyber insurance policies for more than anyone would like or would have imagined.

There seems to be confusion in corporate America about whether or not to delete data. On one hand, there are legal departments that advise keeping everything forever, and on the other are those that recommend deleting everything as a matter of policy as soon as possible — whacking away at files and folders on your file servers like a drunk landscaper whirling a weed whacker around your yard. Meanwhile, IT is stuck in the middle trying to develop and engineer systems to enforce ever-changing data retention policies. 

Originally published on 1/8/18 at Forbes. Hacking is no longer new. It’s become a daily conversation in newsrooms and boardrooms everywhere; hacking and data breaches are the never-ending security story of the 21st century. Hackers illegally make their way into the computer systems of companies, hospitals, government institutions and our homes on a daily basis. […]