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As an alternative to government regulation, how about an approach like Underwriters' Laboratories? Those guys got their start around 130 years ago with regulat

As an alternative to government regulation, how about an approach like Underwriters' Laboratories? Those guys got their start around 130 years ago with regulations about fire doors in factories. Now they have standards for all sorts of EGoT (Electric Grid of Things) devices, from lamps to toasters. They get their teeth from the fire-insurance companies who back them. If you have non-UL junk in your office, an insurance risk-manager inspector will instruct you to change it. If you have that kind of junk in your apartment, heaven help you if you have a fire and make a claim. Industrial shops have Factory Mutual filling the same role. One place I worked required Factory Mutual certification. Those guys are not fooling around; they improved our products. If Walmart and Best Buy discontinued selling uncertified IoT products it would help the cause. Even MicroCenter and Fry's could help get the ball rolling. But they can't do that until a certification process is workable. A UL or FM approach is more workable with USA attitudes toward government regulation. And workable is what we need.

wongarsu 8y ago
Fires are incredibly expensive, which makes everyone buy fire insurance and incentivizes fire insurances to push fire safety on their customers. In contrast, most data breaches are very cheap. In most industries the market doesn't seem to punish breaches at all, so there's only the unquantifyable cost of that data benefiting your competitors. If there was a multi-million-dollar fine on data breaches regardless of fault and countermeasures, we would get exactly what you describe: the market working to reduce risk and average insurance payouts, making everyone's life better in the process.
kevin_b_er 8y ago
This is a "cost for screwing up" approach. The best way to do that is to charge or fine them for such screwups. But, an under-regulated capitalism ideology stands in the way.

wongarsu 8y ago

Fires are incredibly expensive, which makes everyone buy fire insurance and incentivizes fire insurances to push fire safety on their customers. In contrast, most data breaches are very cheap. In most industries the market doesn't seem to punish breaches at all, so there's only the unquantifyable cost of that data benefiting your competitors. If there was a multi-million-dollar fine on data breaches regardless of fault and countermeasures, we would get exactly what you describe: the market working to reduce risk and average insurance payouts, making everyone's life better in the process.

kevin_b_er 8y ago

This is a "cost for screwing up" approach. The best way to do that is to charge or fine them for such screwups. But, an under-regulated capitalism ideology stands in the way.