Well, the U.S. Navy did not get the memo. It took them 17 months to inform employees at the Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center in Port Hueneme, Calif., that their Social Security numbers had been inadvertently released. 17 months is a mighty long time. Check out full coverage of this Washington Post story here.

Retailer JC Penney took it to the next level and actually fought to keep its name secret during court proceedings related to the largest breach of credit card data on record. JC Penney was among the retailers targeted by Albert Gonzalez’s ring of hackers.

Both of these examples should remind all professionals about the consequences of not immediately addressing a data breach. You put your reputation, your business and your customers at risk. Is it really worth digging your head in the sand and hoping the problem will go away??

According to the defense, many undocumented workers commonly buy ID cards from forgers without any intention of invading someone else’s privacy.  In addition, the defense argued that there are roughly a billion possible Social Security numbers, only about 400 million of which have been used.

This is certainly a challenging issue.  Thus it made it to the Supreme Court level.  The bottom line is that by using someone else’s social security number you are commiting a crime.  The real issue here is immigration law.  If there were different standards for undocumented workers to be more “legit,” then there would be no need to use other people identities.  But, again, that is a different issue all together.  What do you all think about this?