Transparency is Overrated

I was so sick of the term transparency during the 2008 Presidential election.  Not that I think transparency for Government is a bad idea but because I know it won’t change with this administration or the next so they should just quit lying about becoming transparent.  Remember Pelosi promised pay as you go, which was before we went trillion’s in the red. As much as I like to talk politics I will skip that and get to my point.  Society is far too transparent for my taste.  On my way to a trip on Friday ( I won’t say where for risk of being a hypocrite) from the time I left the parking shelter to the time the bus arrived at the terminal everyone on the bus knew absolutely everything this one lady did the last night.  Her drunk fight with her boyfriend, everything they fought about, his issues and what he should have done, what she did, etc.  I have no interest in listening but she was obliviously to her volume and made everyone feel awkward.

I can randomly pull up Facebook pages of people I don’t know and read about their kids, their friends, birthdate, etc.  These people have one or two things going on.  One, they don’t realize it and aren’t aware of the security risk involved here.  Two, they don’t really care about the risk.  They want to be transparent and open with their lives.

Many of these same individuals are happy to be transparent with what they do for your company and what your company does behind the scenes.  They will name their bosses by name and what they have done wrong or what he did yesterday, “My Boss Joe Daniels from accounting is headed to Seattle for the weekend.  He is worried he won’t make it back in time for his son’s baseball game.” That one sentence can cause someone terrible identity damage.  Transparency on the web assumes there are no nefarious folks also looking at the information.

There are actually web sites that update when addresses should be robbed just based off of their transparency.  Business leaks are even worse.  Since we don’t want to control what people say and think outside of work I suppose we just need to hire better people and try to sniff out the gossips during the interview process.  If people gossip about family and friends they will definitely gossip about the corporation.

Corporations can stay proactive and monitor leaks on the web.  When information is found they leaker can be dealt with.  They can also prevent it from being leaked from inside the company walls with DLP protection.