I did a little research the other day and asked 10 people that I know if they read my blog. All of them said that they did so therefore I can assume that 100% of the people read my blog. At least that's true if I follow the premise of the Times Online. They took a study by Sophos that said that half of the respondents of a survey said that they had piggybacked off of some one's open WiFi connection. They then translated that to say that 1/2 of computer users steal WiFi. Makes sense doesn't it?
Along those same lines there is the guy who did port scans of 1,000,000 IP addresses and discovered that 210 of them had unprotected databases exposed to the web. He then decided that that means that there are 500,000 unprotected databases on the Internet. Now I understand statistics and such but I think these are a little far fetched. Your sample has to have rhyme and reason to it and I don't see that in either of these cases.
What statistic I do see that isn't pretty is Montana State University having 3 data breach disclosures in ONE day. That has to hurt. At least the number of exposed records is small (272) unless you are one of the 272 then it becomes a much larger number. What got me about this is this comment
According to university spokeswoman Cathy Conover, the data on the USB storage device was not encrypted. Following the incident, the university has initiated steps to remove all personal information from portable storage devices to mitigate the risk of something similar happening again, she said.Once again we see organizations reacting instead of being proactive. In today's world this needs to be something that is already in place or at least being actively pursued. It should not be an after thought.
