Data Amalgamation
I have been saying for some time now that these data breaches are far more disastrous than people admit.
The problem is that as more and more data is available both legitimately and through breaches/theft it becomes easier to join the dots and put together data sets that have all of the critical information. The likes of Experian and other headline breaches simply walk away from the consequences of what has happened. Credit cards can be reissued but other information that many services use are fixed:
Birthday
Mother's Maiden Name
Place of birth
NI number (or whatever)
Driver number
Some of these can be changed but there is no way of doing it AND crucially you have no way of knowing if it has been stolen. Add the increased use of bio-metrics and we are reaching the point where any security is just a cover to the point of access. Anyone with the information can get in.
Compute has reached the point where is is easier and cheap enough to do this and the money to be made has now increased to such an extent that the investment required is will worth the cost.
The loss of the data is the easy bit, taking responsibility and fixing the ongoing security issues is just being ignored because it is too difficult to fix. Massive fine only go so far much will just go unreported but still don't fix the problem that once the data has been accessed, that is it. You can never get it back, it is not like a stolen telly where the police recover it and you get it back.