Social media is now the window to any business. 83% of organizations use social media as a marketing tactic, making it the most popular marketing tool. It is updated far more regularly than any website and businesses build a following based on publishing engaging content regularly. While businesses see the importance of using social media to quickly build their brand and reputation, there has been little emphasis on the downside to this. How social media can destroy a company’s reputation in an instant.

According to National Journal, “The Office of Personnel Management announced last week that the personal data for 21.5 million people had been stolen. But for national security professionals and cybersecurity experts, the more troubling issue is the theft of 1.1 million fingerprints.”

As many of you will have seen in the media last week Paddy Power announced a leak of almost 650,000 client’s details, dating back to 2010.

Not so long ago I wrote two blog posts on the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL. In one of them I alluded to the fact that we have not seen the end of it, unfortunately I was right.

The management of information is primarily the owner’s responsibility and secondly the responsibility of all other stakeholders that may have a vested interest in the information, or the data owner. In a world where individuals and businesses are becoming engulfed in new data every day; personal ownership needs to take a more pro-active role in its management.

Credit card fraud in 2012 cost $5.55 billion worldwide. But there are other problems - is the way you handle credit card information sufficient?