If companies know that data leaks are inevitable, then we need to shift our security models to be, "avoid storing anything on a corporate server that we don't need to store."

You're saying that incompetence is not the reason that breaches are happening. Fine. But breaches are still happening, so maybe Target shouldn't be storing credit cards at all. I have insecure things in my life that I know are insecure. I know that probably at some point in my life someone, somewhere will break into my car, so I don't store tons of money and jewelry inside it.

We know what the solution is to a data store that's fundamentally insecure and can't be fixed -- you limit the amount of sensitive data inside of it so that when it is hacked, the damages are mitigated. We already see this in many large companies with their email retention policies. Many companies take the view, "we don't know when we're going to be embroiled in some random, crazy legal battle. So we delete old emails whenever we're legally allowed to."

I understand where you're coming from with the perspective that incompetence is hard to measure, and to an extent, I agree with you. But the data breaches are just as damaging to consumers regardless of who's at fault. I have very little sympathy for a company that says, "we shouldn't suffer because of a breach because we couldn't reasonably prevent it." Consumers can't prevent breaches.

Companies should face an equivalent risk to consumers, so that they're incentivized to reduce that risk in any way they can. That doesn't need to be at the CISCO level, I'd prefer it be at the shareholder level.