We are building data breach machines and nobody cares

How about we start with some strict data privacy and handling laws? Make it so you straight up just can't collect & store personal information without proving that it's required and without it your business would not work (and no, data harvesting for advertising/marketing doesn't count).

Security is the problem, but it would be less of a problem if everyone wasn't trying to hoard as much data as possible from their customers for seemingly no reason at all. Take a scroll through the Play Store/App Store and look how many really simple apps request permissions for camera, microphone, location, local network, etc. for something like a metronome app that needs none of that.

I don't think companies care all that much about reputational damage from the terrible press. Some of the most profitable wealthy corporations on the planet are also the most hated. We have profitable corporations that have committed serial killings, infanticide, and mass poisonings. There's press about companies whose products and profits come from the use of literal child slaves. There is "terrible press" out there right now explaining how you are currently being hurt by companies who put profit over human life, but they aren't going out of business because of it.

Do you know how many companies have had bad press about data breeches and security issues, but are still around and making money? I'm pretty sure it's all of them. Including solarwinds.

Companies don't care if you like them or not. They care only about money. Until the cost of not securing people's data is likely to be higher than what they'll save ignoring security risks corporations aren't going to bother to give us anything but security theater, promises, and the occasional check for $10 and a year of "identify protection services" after another pointless class action lawsuit.

For every Solarwinds, there are hundreds of breaches that never get more that a cursory reporting (if that). And Solarwinds is still in business (and some would call "taken private at pennies on the dollar" as a feature not a bug, but I digress), as are vastly more consequential examples (Equifax, anyone?).

Yes...reputational damage is a thing, but in my experience (sitting in the decision making meetings, as a participant, many, many times in my career) it's a second-tier player at the end of the day. This is especially true of data breaches...I cannot count the number of times (in the last decade particularly) where the decision point was "What reputation damage? Everyone and their mother has had a data breach. No one cares.". I don't think they're wrong.

This, like many issues of security and risk, is the consequence of the vast majority of the customers not caring. How many users dropped Facebook in 2019, or LinkedIn in 2021 (or 2012)? How many swore off Ticketmaster? Marriott? Adobe? eBay? And that's just ungodly massive breaches. So why would the average business give a steaming crap?

In my dark little heart of hearts I sometimes think "what would it take for the average person to actually care", and then I realize what that looks like, and I don't sleep well for a couple of nights. Cheers!

Nothing happened in the grand-scheme of things. Even after Oracle lied and pulled some shady tactics to downplay what happened.

A few years ago Crowdstrike took down the entire set of corporate computers and everyone still uses Falcon. There is simply no accountability anymore