Somehow, this story sounds familiar. A total of 243,000 credit card numbers stolen, that many more potential victims. Yet, they are far from alone, just a few weeks ago, data (including social security numbers) for 26 million vets was stolen. This is becoming an ugly trend.

No matter how many reminders, it seems the message never makes it through. There is no shortage of products that would have made both of these stories much less important, but it both cases there was no real attempt to protect the data. If the data had been encrypted, it’s likely that there would be no real risk to the public. But that wasn’t the case.

Due to bad and poorly enforced policies, laziness, and a lack of understanding, millions are at risk. Small mistakes can have a massive impact, when dealing with private data, take every possible measure to ensure it stays private.