Trust no one.

Let's play the finger pointing game

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years you’ve probably heard about “Identity Theft” and all the major security breaches of sensitive information. No really good story can exist without your duly elected representatives, the media, and unpaid pundits including yours truly from expressing their biased and largely uneducated opinion on who is to blame. It’s my opinion that if anyone is to blame its you. Of course, I also believe it is not a question of “who” it is a matter of “what”. Like all great social failures no one person or entity caused this mess, the cause is how we do business today.

It's all your fault

The question in front of us is: Why is the preverbal “you” at fault? Because the identity being stolen is our own; we have a choice. We can either own the problem or be the victim. I choose NOT to be the victim and in so choosing I must accept responsibility for dealing with the problem. What's your choice?

In god we trust: All others pay cash.

Back in the day before the Internet, computers, and rampant credit borrowing; Identity Theft wasn’t a major news item. Why was that? What was different then in how we did business compared to today? I can answer that question in one word – cash.

Cash; anonymous, universally accepted, and safe – you could, and still can, walk into any store, pick up the item you want, and put down that cold hard cash. No identity required, no identity given, no identity exposed to be stolen. I want to focus on the “no identity given” part of that sentence. We are calling this major issue “Identity Theft” when in fact we are giving away our identity every time we make a purchase, go to the doctor, or fly in a plane. We then insist – after the fact – that the business or our government secure our identity from harm. This is akin to demanding our government to protect us from dying. Those of us in the business of security know that there is no such thing as being “secure.” The focus is on risk management.

"people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both"
Benjamin Franklin