The Ashley Madison fiasco has died down somewhat, and companies are beginning to invest huge sums on hacker proofing their online presence.
But that’s not the issue I learnt from the scandal.
The head of Ashley Madison, a guy called Noel Biderman was an entrepreneur who discovered a money making angle. Whether you believe in his business model or not, it made money. But he was not a coder, couldn’t distinguish his C++ from his PHP. So hired coders and programmers to create the website front end.
As a result he never really understood the need for security.
Companies such as Facebook have Mark Zuckerberg, he’s a programmer and understands. The original builders of Google – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – were also programmers so was Bill Gates from Microsoft. These people comprehend the need for security and have never been caught out.
Do we truly understand every aspect of our businesses? We don’t need to carry out every role, we’ll never have the time and delegation takes over. But if we truly recognise the issues facing our business, we’ll never get caught out.
Unlike the Ashley Madison 30 million customers, when their details were released online.
