Small Ecommerce Companies and Data Liability

[mandy]

For startup e-commerce companies, protecting customer data doesn't always come naturally. Small matters such as getting a business idea out of the starting gates and into the race -- not to mention winning those very first customers -- tend to overshadow the many liabilities associated with collecting and storing customer data.

However, liabilities they are, no matter how big the company or whether it realizes it or not.

"It's sort of like those old Mickey Rooney movies, where they would get five or six people together and say, 'Let's put on a play'," Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department's computer crime unit and managing director of technology for FTI Consulting, told the E-Commerce Times. "People often think all they need are coders and a Web site, and the business will run itself."

Alas, that's not quite the case, as companies sometimes learn the hard way...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/bNW4e2vT...tter.xhtml

[mandy]

A related article focusing on larger ecommerce players:

Ask anyone what comes to mind when they think of TJX Companies, and they'll almost certainly mention the infamous data breach earlier this year that exposed more than 45 million customer credit and debit cards to hackers. That's the kind of publicity most companies can do without, but it's also the inevitable result of being a large, well-known company and experiencing a breach of security...

"If I'm a bad guy, I don't want one customer's credit card information -- I want lots of people's information," said Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department's computer crime unit and managing director of technology for FTI Consulting. "The bad guys really want to go after the companies with the most data."...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/ODKsA8fl...uble.xhtml