The Downside of Visibility
I’ve been talking a lot with clients lately about security and the Cloud. These issues aren’t new, but something came up in conversation that has been resonating with me for days. As with most interesting ideas, it is pretty simple. The bigger and more well-known your organization is, the higher the likelihood is that someone dislikes you (for whatever reason) and will try to mess with you. This is acutely true in our industry where security is the name of the game and hackers take pride in sticking it to the corporate juggernauts who claim their systems are impenetrable.
A perfect example is the great Sony network hack from earlier this year. Despite the damage to Sony’s credibility, very few people profited from any stolen secrets on this job … it was likely just mischief for the sake of bragging rights. That is often the case with hackers and online saboteurs. It is reasonable to suppose they did it just because Sony is huge and they wanted to prove they could slay a giant. This phenomena raises an interesting paradox: nearly every organization wants to grow and increase their visibility to the public in order to get new clients and customers. However, you may reach a point where the shady characters start to take notice and you become a target.