FROM ANTHEM TO ANATHEMA Have you ever lost your smartphone, even just for an hour or two? If so, you probably recall the wave of panic that set in when you thought it might be gone forever. Losing any digital device can be extremely troubling for a number of reasons. First, mobile devices and laptops are not cheap. The thought of spending hundreds of dollars, or even a couple thousand dollars in the case of a laptop, to replace the lost device is distressing. However, what often creates the most panic is the thought of the person now possessing your device finding a way to access all of your data.

If you were to lose a digital device, what data would you be most concerned about banking data, email archives, social media accounts, your collection of photos, or some- thing else? There is no right or wrong answer to this question, and responses vary from person to person. However, what is certain is the likelihood that in the future someone will access your personal data. The frustrating part is that in most cases, the culprits will not even need physical access to your smartphone or laptop. Your data can be stolen just as easily from a company storing it in the cloud. Don't believe it? Just ask anyone covered by Anthem health care in February 2015. Cloudy with a Chance ofTheft More and more data are being stored in the cloud. Why? Because data storage costs have plummeted and Internet access has become faster and cheaper. In 1990, 1 million transistors cost $527, a gigabyte of storage cost $569, and a gigabit per second of bandwidth cost $1,245.But today 1 million transistors cost $0.05, a gigabyte of storage costs $0.02, and a gigabit per second of bandwidth costs $15. Internet users want easy access to more and more data. Unfortunately, the downside to greater accessibility is that it becomes more accessible to hackers too.

In early 2015, Anthem Insurance Companies, Inc. reported a security breach resulting in the loss of roughly 80 million customer accounts. Hackers stole sensitive account data like names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and salaries. While any nationally publicized security breach will cause concern, especially in light of the recent trend in breaches with the Target and Home Depot incidents, Anthem customers became more and more irate as details about the nature of the breach were reported. Anthem eventually dis- closed that the account data stolen had been stored in plain text not encrypted. This meant that hackers could immediately begin selling the data on the black market or using it for other nefarious purposes.

Security experts criticized Anthem for not encrypting sensitive customer account data. Numerous clients considered Anthem's failure to encrypt account records negligent, and they subsequently filed lawsuits. Bad for Business or Business as Usual? How would you feel if your account data had been part of the Anthem breach? Would this incident make you want to switch to a different healthcare provider, or would you recognize that large corporate data breaches are just a fact of life in a digital world and that your new healthcare provider could be equally vulnerable? The reality is that data breaches are so pervasive that it is not a matter of if but when a company holding data about you will be hacked. In fact, about a month after the Anthem data breach, Premera Blue Cross announced the loss of 11 million customer records. The lost customer records were even more sensitive because they included bank-account and medical data.

Despite these threats, it is highly unlikely that companies will begin pulling data from the cloud. Consumers clearly want the ease of use that Web-based services provide. However, it is possible that corporations' security practices could evolve from being a necessary evil to becoming a competitive advantage. In fact, there could come a time when a company's reputation for information security could be more valuable than the very products or services it sells!

Have prior data breaches, like those at Home Depot or Target, affected your behavior as a consumer? How?