No thanks, I'll use Cash...

USA Today reports that banks are starting to put in more safeguards to protect against data theft.

I'm so glad (not) that they are putting in all of this to guard against online issues, but who's protecting me on the street? Will I someday go to a store, make my selections, and upon stepping up to the check out and presenting my credit card, be asked:

- Can I see your ID?

I imagine that the clerk with take a minute or two to examine the two documents, and then look up and spout:

- Please place your palm on the scanner for verification.

and I'd dutifully follow directions (since even Disney asks for a hand/finger verification). Maybe some folks will give them a #1 first. Perhaps there will be a data glitch and the palm print is not successfully verified within the 0% tolerance and they'll say:

- Can you step over here for a retina scan?

They do this in Europe, right, for those frequent travellers. But oops, I blinked, because I'm getting nervous. So, after failing the test, they'd probably ask:

- Would you mind providing a blood sample?

and that's where I'd draw the line. C'mon, I can't risk those contaminated needles, so, I'd either decline, forego my purchases, or, if I'm desperate, try to cough up some cash to complete my purchase.

Somehow, since we know that the credit bureaus have multiple records under my Social Security Number (which they won't confess or acknowledge), who's to say that all of my personal data hasn't already been cloned or mutilated?

The Scoop on eMail and SOX

Management for Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance. In simple terms, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requires businesses to demonstrate effective corporate governance and information management controls.

At a fundamental level, complying with the regulation means establishing a process for managing communications and information lifecycle management. Since email has become the de facto method of business communication and the most critical source of information for almost every large business, the management of email is a fundamental element of SOX compliance.

The prospect of storing and retrieving email is daunting, as the sheer volume of email exchanged among enterprises is staggering. Recent research from the Radicati Group, Inc. states that the average corporate email user sends and receives 84 emails a day, equating to 10 MB per day of storage. This number is expected to rise to 15.8 MB per user, per day by 2008. Recent TowerGroup research on email content management states that by 2007 the securities industry alone will handle more than 95.8 million email messages per day.

What this means to you
I was explaining math to my 10yo, y'know, stuff like why 8+4x2 is 16 instead of 24 - the "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" mnemonic - Parentheses-Exponent-Multiply-Divide-Add-Subtract hierarchy for mathematical operations. We drifted on to exponents and as we were going through 2⁴ is 2x2x2x2 and 3³ is 3x3x3, the 6yo chimed in when I asked about 5³, announcing that 5³ would be 5x5x5. Oh, my point? My point is that you should be able to figure it out yourself about what this SOX stuff should mean to you personally without me having to explicitly state it.

What this means to the company
Less (computer, network, data, etc.) resources are needed for corporate email archiving when email correspondence of a non-business nature (pictures, funnies, family activities, etc.) are excluded from corporate email addresses.