and Massive Data Sweep, albeit with a different twist. House Energy and Commerce Committee passed legislation forcing data brokers to disclose security breaches to the public. in just over 15 months. A new database security gadget that allows for proactive hack blocking has hit the market, with Crossroads Systems announcing its StrongBox SecurDB on Feb. We are forced to provide the IRS with information about our salary and more because it is our civic duty to pay taxes that fund our government and the social services that go along with them. When unstructured data is added to the mix data management becomes more complicated because unstructured data is usually large and unwieldy as compared to numeric and alphanumeric data. Sponsored by: Links to external sites are subject to change; DBAzine. What about other options? Government operations, financial institutions, and insurance and health companies usually are more conservative than other types of companies. Now these are issues that are near and dear to my heart. So what steps are you taking to become more knowledgeable about business instead of just being a tech geek? I think we may need a penalty wherein any company that has data stolen from it owes monetary damages to anyone whose records were breached. For example, an Excel Spreadsheet might use a secure method to obtain data - but how is the spreadsheet itself to be controlled? A SSWUG reader brought this site up and after reading it over I think it is a very nice starting point for DBAs, as well. The article describes an effort called ADVISE, which is an acronym for a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement. I try to avoid making predictions about the future of technology for many reasons. The penalty may not be the same, but a stiff penalty is needed. Do you speak up and maybe lose your job? For example, who among us feels comfortable scanning database log records to produce database audit reports? I delivered two DB2 presentations at SHARE this week and I enjoyed speaking to different folks than I see at the regional DB2 user groups and IDUG. So what is being done about all of these data breaches?