Public notifications of accidental breaches of personally identifiable information are common. Are companies required to have safeguards to prevent this information from getting into the wrong hands?

It seems a day doesn't go by without another news story about a breach of sensitive data at a government agency, educational institution, or well-known corporation. These breaches typically involve personally identifiable information (PII) such as Social Security numbers, drivers' license information, bank account and credit card numbers, medical records, and other data.

One of the biggest motivators for protecting sensitive data is the negative impact a leak has on an organization's brand and public reputation. No company wants to see its name on the front page of the newspaper or leading a television or radio news program because of a data leak.

In addition, many regulations use financial penalties or even the risk of jail time to force organizations to protect PII. Some regulations are industry specific, such as the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act (GLBA) for banks and credit unions or the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) for medical institutions and healthcare providers. Other laws and regulations may can also be more broadly focused. The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards, for example, address any organization that handles credit card numbers, and SB-1386 requires businesses in California to disclose any breach that they believe has disclosed unencrypted data.

It's increasingly apparent that organizations are putting safeguards in place either to prevent PII getting into the wrong hands or frankly, just to avoid the damaging consequences if a leak occurs. However, installing safeguards is a huge undertaking, involving enormous amounts of private data that can manifest itself in a broad range of content, from Excel documents to XML data. Even for organizations in heavily regulated industries, identifying all content on their networks that represents risk can be a costly undertaking. Furthermore, auditing and securing existing business processes that define the procedures for handling sensitive data can be challenging.

Much of the focus for IT security personnel in the last ten years has been on protecting organizations from external attacks, such as hackers or Trojans that can penetrate the network and gain access to critical internal assets. More recently, the focus has shifted to internal threats and the risk of critical digital assets leaving the network. Regulatory changes have been a key driver in this area. Today, organizations across all industries (even those not directly affected by regulations) are taking the safeguarding of PII very seriously. They are implementing technology-based solutions as well as new best-practice guidelines and end-user training to mitigate these risks to PII.