Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong IT defenses

Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by peterbonney on Friday September 23, 2016 @08:06AM (#12563926)

One reason it's true is because companies only measure actual cost, not opportunity cost. How much did it cost Yahoo to have every tech-savvy person in the world switch to Gmail because of Yahoo's lousy (and Google's excellent) security infrastructure? Where the tech-savvy go, the tech-unsavvy often follow. As they did with Gmail.

But lost revenue opportunities don't show up in the bottom line, so cost-focused managers don't think about them. And they conclude it's "cheaper" to not invest in this or that thing that their smarter competitors are doing.

"What gets measure gets managed." People think this (apocryphal) Drucker quote is advice. It is not advice. It's a warning.

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Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by jhanschoo on Friday September 23, 2016 @09:54AM (#12564599)

Actually, it was the free space. Everyone who used Gmail didn't trust it very much and was wary about Google sharing their info, especially as it was showing ads related to your email archive.

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Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by richmarr on Friday September 23, 2016 @08:11AM (#12563949)

Not sure I agree that it was Google and Yahoo's respective security architecture that caused people to switch, even tech-savvy people.

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Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by peterbonney on Friday September 23, 2016 @08:47AM (#12564123)

Sure. But all the things Gmail offered were things that probably looked like lousy investments to Yahoo. Why offer more storage? Why have better spam filtering? Why have better security? It all costs money!!!

The point is only looking at actual cost, not opportunity cost.

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Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by richmarr on Friday September 23, 2016 @12:54PM (#12566040)

Yep. Good clarification.

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Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by karmelapple on Friday September 23, 2016 @08:14AM (#12563965)

Fully agreed. It was all about a lot of free storage space.

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Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by jpindar on Friday September 23, 2016 @08:34AM (#12564062)

And spam. Yahoo accounts got so much spam.

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Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by yomly on Friday September 23, 2016 @09:38AM (#12564479)

For a long while you had to configure Yahoo to actually store sent mail, otherwise once sent it was gone for good.

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