Layoffs causing massive data and intellectual property thefts

If you consider the huge layoffs in recent months, the fact that a lot of people are taking corporate information with them is scary enough. This information is buying new jobs in a murderous employment market. It's also opening up a new crime wave.

Thanks again, Wall Street. Just when you think the meltdown couldn’t get any more destructive, here’s a little number that should have people moving to other planets if they have to walk. A new report called Unsecured Economies presented to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland isn’t doing much for the peace of mind of global economies. The Age explains:

The international study found the 800 companies reported losing an average of $US4.6 million ($7 million) worth of intellectual property last year. Globally, that would generate total losses of $US1 trillion, and staff were cited as a major cause.

"Forty-two per cent [of companies] said laid-off employees were the single biggest threat to their intellectual property and other sensitive data," says the report, commissioned by computer security firm McAfee.

Much nastier, there’s a very ready market for stolen data. There are potential security and criminal threats which go hand in hand with what is potentially a whole new global black market on the rise. According to McAfee Australia, the security firm is seeing 3000-4000 new pieces of malware per day. Last year, a total of 2 million forms of malware were identified by anti virus companies. There’s a very big additional problem with this situation. The malware designers had to try to steal the data, working with the possibilities of cracking security processes. That’s been a problem, but the malware hasn’t been too effective overall. Now, with stolen data, the designers of malware can work directly on existing codes, systems and security. Sensitive information is worth big money, and there is no way that criminal groups will miss the chance to make millions out of the opportunities created by stolen data. On the other side of the issue is the fact that the layoffs are guaranteed to create motivated thieves among people who’ve lost their homes, jobs, and careers. As an ethical question, theft may be wrong, but so’s poverty. There’s also a big cultural wound here as a result of the thunderous fall of America’s rotting Mammon. Previously, data theft was pretty minimal, a steady drip. Now it’s a flood tide. The meltdown's fundamental insanity has created another social disaster. The perception for years has been that ethics didn’t mean much if anything to the executive class. So nobody’s likely to be too concerned about the amount of damage stolen data will do to the corporations cutting jobs. The obvious result is that stealing data is fair game, and fair payback for wrecking people’s lives. Unfortunately, the corporate world is also the big employer and business generator. Its profitability is the safe deposit box for a lot of workers’ nest egg investments. Stolen information can do a lot of damage to businesses. It can neutralize the value of intellectual property, destroy business security, and crash companies. In America's case, intellectual property and business information is also a major cash crop. Loss of these things will hit the bottom line of a lot of major American institutions. That will also hit the US economy, and hit some of the surviving industrial income earners. Stealing information from the big US computer companies alone, by definition, means billions. So the stolen data can turn into an own goal, however richly deserving of payback the employers laying off millions of people may be. That’s not likely to be much of a concern to the criminal element, however. The stolen data is valued at a trillion dollars, and that’s just the identified amount of information known to have been stolen. Stolen data could be worth more than the drug trade, slavery, people smuggling, and every other form of criminal business combined. So far, the total failure of the market culture has destroyed global trade, obliterated millions of jobs, annihilated the credit markets, and now, it’s creating trillion dollar business opportunities for organized crime, all in less than two years. Anyone like to let off a few thousand nuclear warheads so they can make a few bucks on the advertising?