It never rains but it pours. Just as bosses and boards have finally

sorted out their worst accounting and compliance troubles, and improved

their feeble corporation governance, a new problem threatens to earn

it—especially in America—the sort of nasty headlines that inevitably 【M1】_________

lead to heads rolling in the executive suite: data insecurity. Leave, until 【M2】_________

now, to odd, low-level IT staff to put right, and seen as a concern only

of data-rich industries such as banking, telecoms and air travel, information

protection is now high on the boss’s agenda in businesses with every 【M3】_________

variety.

Several massive leakages of customer and employer data this year— 【M4】_________

from organizations as diverse as Time Warner, the American defense

contractor Science Applications International Corp and even the

University of California, Berkeley—have left managers hurriedly peer 【M5】_________

into their intricate IT systems and business processes in the search of 【M6】_________

potential vulnerabilities.

“Data is becoming an asset which needs to be guarded as many as 【M7】_________

any other asset,” says Haim Mendelson of Stanford University’s business

school. “The ability to guard customer data is the key to market value,

what the board is responsible for on behalf of shareholders.” Indeed, 【M8】_________

just like there is the concept of Generally Accepted Accounting 【M9】_________

Principles (GAAP), perhaps it is time for GASP, Generally Accepted

Security Practices, suggested Eli Noam of New York’s Columbia

Business School. “Setting up the proper investment level for security, 【M10】_________

redundancy and recovery is a management issue, not a technical one,”

he says.

【M6】