Why Stop IT Incompetence?  Data Breaches

Although an IT expert myself, over the years I, including my family, have had horrendous experiences, particularly data breaches, as victims of IT incompetence by the government, business, media, etc.

And I was amazed by headlines of "the most massive data breach yet" being reported regularly in the news, right up to today.

And I was appalled to realize IT incompetence was severely threatening national security (see 9/11 Was Due to IT Incompetence).

To cover up their negligence, whenever one of these IT incompetent organizations got hacked (had a data breach) they claimed (and still claim) it was a "sophisticated" hacking. They pretended that they were not IT incompetent, just that the hackers were IT geniuses ("black hat hacker Einsteins"), so there was nothing the organization could have done about it.

But most hackers are not IT geniuses performing sophisticated hacks. They are just "script kiddies" using readily-available programs they have little understanding of (see No IT Education: "The Defaults Work So I'm A Genius" Syndrome) to exploit security holes that competent IT people would not have allowed (incompetent IT people hate security patches because they often break programs that they could only get to work because of the security holes).

I came to the conclusion that the problem, a massive one — a plague costing billions and severely risking national security — is not hackers, but IT incompetence. All data breaches are caused by IT incompetence. Period.

In fact, before apscitu.com (.net, .org) there was stop-it-incompetence.org (.net, .com) and apscitu.com was founded to stop IT incompetence to the highest levels of government, business, and the media by providing highest-grade secure custom IT services and consulting for select clients.

These IT incompetent organizations also always claimed (and still claim) they could find no evidence hackers actually took any data, or used it if they did, but "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". If they were too IT incompetent to stop the hackers in the first place they would be too IT incompetent to be able to find any such evidence. Moreover, they have an overwhelming incentive not to find any such evidence — it would make them look bad — and they aren't going to find what they don't want to find (or the "independent" IT incompetent companies they are paying to find it aren't going to find it).

See also IT Hiring: No Personal Consequences for IT Incompetence, Just Excuses.

← Previous Entry     Next Entry →