Where does data go to die?

As companies are folding in the financial services sector and pretty much every other sector a question comes to mind. A company closes its doors, lays off employees, shuts down the server farm and essentially turns off the lights. But, what about all of that customer data? The data that sits on those databases, that exist on laid off employees laptops and flash drives and elsewhere. A corporate entity has dissolved so if there is a leak who is accountable? Can anyone say for certain that the data was destroyed, when the servers and laptops go back to the leasing companies, is there still sensitive data on them? I think you see where I am going here.

As companies downsize and even implode, your data is at risk. That’s right, your personal data. You will have disgruntled laid off employees helping themselves to data, sales staff may feel that the contacts they made during their tenure are theirs as well.

There will also be aqcuisitions, so your personal data may be with one company now, but an entirely different one tomorrow and they may just change their privacy policies on you. Corporations are getting desperate, as are sales staff, which is one of the reasons I am still up. I was fast asleep and forgot to put my cell phone on vibrate, at 10:30PM an inside sales director from Eloqua called me on my mobile number to give me a sales pitch, not only waking me up but also my whole family.  Needless to say I and my four year old son were not too happy. It just makes me wonder what other lines these companies may cross as they get more desperate for sales and cash.Tech companies have no real assets, the only asset they have many times is data, customer data.

The number of data breaches and misuse of our personal information is going to be going up this year, as if you didn’t have enough to worry about.