Comment: Corporate Liability for Data Breaches: Will Equifax Victims Have a Leg to Stand On?

18 Wake Forest J. Bus. & Intell. Prop. L. 525

News of corporate data breaches littering headlines have become as
ubiquitous as those about President Trump’s visits to Mar-a-Lago. Both occur frequently, are unsurprising, and are costing Americans a
great deal of money. But what is being done to change this narrative?
It is likely that at some point nearly every individual has encountered
an employer, a government official, a tech-savvy cousin, an online
retailer, or an educational institution’s IT department, who stresses the
importance of cybersecurity or password protection. The likely
response from the individual is a smile, nod, and promise to stop using
the password created ten years ago for an AOL account that merely
combined a name and birthday. A password so simple that it does not
even stump a computer illiterate grandmother. Unfortunately, it is time
to realize that the individuals stressing the importance of password
diversification and cybersecurity are not just lecturing for fun, and the
data breach headlines that seem to greet us daily must be taken
seriously.