Who Are We When We No Longer Speak For Ourselves?

With massive, ongoing data breaches becoming more common, we’re witnessing the erosion of self: self-determination, self-motivation, self-governance; our memory and what we believe, our sense of reality, and our part in our common culture. We’re being matched by a need or requirement for compliance with collected data sets, interpretations and extant corporate priorities, and a “better” understanding of who we “really” are.

The cost of liability to an enterprise is rising: cyber-security firm Kroll reports that the “organizational cost of a data breach in 2014 increased to $5.9 million, up 9 percent from $5.4 million in 2013. Additionally, the same research revealed that in 2014, the estimated cost of a general data breach was $201 per compromised record, up $10 (7 percent) from 2013.” Despite this, companies continue to amass very personal data about us, whether we want to cooperate or not. However, many breaches go unreported, and continued building of these databases belies a much bigger opportunity for organized crime and corporate mayhem.

Coaching moment: Do you remember the old tv series or newer films called Mission Impossible? The cast had a highly sensitive mission in which they donned the identity of others to accomplish some mission. What happens when criminals use our “verifiable” identity (complete with secondary identifiers such as mother’s maiden name, last four digits of our social security number, or what street we lived on at some random point in our past)? How do we clear ourselves of the crime?

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