Management and practitioners are consistently caught off guard with ever increasing security infringements. The fact that data privacy violations are increasing is due to three primary reasons. First, hackers are becoming more sophisticated and more resourceful. Second, management is not always aware of the factors that will govern and establish viable security policies ensuring data security. Third, practitioners lack knowledge on a variety of security mechanisms available to them, this is necessary to protect data, apply best practices and implement security solutions.
Whether it is the apparent increase in data theft incidents or the stricter regulatory environment, companies are worried about how they house their data. On the regulatory side, congress began passing acts that had significant information impact with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) in 1996 followed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) in 1999 and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in November 2002. These acts were in response to the rise data privacy violations, malicious code, identity theft. But the events that flamed these provisions were the financial fraudulent acts of WorldCom, Enron, and Tyco top executives. Prior to SOX, data privacy or data security wasn’t the highest priority or concern for database managers, administrators and developers.
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