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All you are doing by making such punishing consequences is giving hackers an actual motivation for breaching public companies. Right now if data leaks, maybe y
by matte_black 8y ago
All you are doing by making such punishing consequences is giving hackers an actual motivation for breaching public companies.
Right now if data leaks, maybe you get some emails and user data which is cool but ultimately useless beyond spam value or for identity fraud, or perhaps for hacking some other financial accounts that may be of some value, but also adds more risk.
But if you know a company could be utterly destroyed with fines, you can open up a huge short position on the company and then publicize the breach somewhere and wait for the stock to drop to zero.
Or maybe you’re a startup and want to eliminate some competitors. Pay off some hackers in bitcoin to attack and breach their servers and watch them go under.
Better to just leave things the way they are now.
- gnode 8y agoYou could take your reasoning to physical security, and say that banks shouldn't be expected to protect customers' safe deposit boxes, because a bank robber could open a huge short position in the bank, rob them, and profit from the loss of customer trust.
- matte_black 8y agoNope. The equivalent argument is that if one branch of a bank gets robbed they should be fined to near bankruptcy, which would almost certainly cause a drop in shareholder value.