The cover of Newsweek? ID theft. Read below for some frightening statistics.

"Over the last nine years, criminals have gotten a better understanding of the power of information," says Rob Douglas of PrivacyToday, a security consulting firm. "Instead of selling drugs, so much can be made so quickly with identify theft, and the likelihood of getting caught is almost nil." The Department of Justice has reprioritized to fight the plague, but it's a big challenge; Avivah Litan of research firm Gartner Group speculates that fewer than 1 in 700 identity crimes leads to a conviction. This goes a long way toward explaining why it's the fastest-growing crime of this century. Chairman Majoras, now suffering anxiety simply because she bought some shoes, has testified before Congress that crooks rack up $53 billion a year in ID theft. Consumers are stuck with $5 billion directly, but the rest of it is mainly paid by retailers and businesses—which pass it back to us in higher prices.

posted by mt at 13:50

I hope you enjoy the new column, it went up today. It's a bit silly, but I had a good time writing it. There are some lessons to be learned though. Let me know what you think.

Today let's imagine the life of a typical security consultant, who we'll call Brownlocks…

Brownlocks is a technical guy. He loves getting his hands dirty and zoning out while hunching over a laptop, inspecting packets or pieces of code. Unfortunately, working on the good stuff is typically only a sliver of the work week. Pre-sales meetings, proposal writing and client development eat up the bulk of his consulting hours -- the business side of the house. While reviewing the schedule from a few weeks ago, Brownlocks was ecstatic to find nothing but technical work ahead of him for several days. The technical work is the fun part, yet too often it slides in under the guise of all those meetings, phone calls, discussions and appointments.

posted by mt at 21:13