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Monday, January 30, 2006

From the absurd-ways-to- think-about-it department

A report released Friday by security-software company Symantec suggests that an ordinary notebook holds content valued at 550,000 pounds ($972,000), and that some could store as much as 5 million pounds--or $8.8 million--in commercially sensitive data and intellectual property. - CNET News.com, January 27, 2006
This is just preposterous on its face. Of course, they are talking about laptops used by businesses, so that's already moving away from the concept of "an ordinary notebook" (here's another article on the same report, this one referring to "the average laptop"--and nice to see the IT journalists falling within a factor of two of each other when regurgitating the central number in a prepackaged story).

There seems to be an assumption that the data on one of these laptops will be lost forever if it falls into the wrong hands, although no doubt the bulk of it exists in other copies within the organization. Or perhaps they are assuming that the wrong hands will be able to timely exploit all the information on the notebook and leverage the maximum value from it. Or perhaps they are assuming that these ordinary notebooks and average laptops are the business equivalent of submarine code books--when one is compromised you have to assume the worst, toss the lot and start over from scratch.

Since each of these assumptions is absurd, am I missing another that makes this report remotely creditable? (Yes, I'm talking to you, CISSP. How many other CISSPs do you think read this blog?)

Coincidentally, I found this item just after I started backing up all my digital photos to DVDs. Maybe I have been undervaluing my photographic talents.


posted at 11:00 PM

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