Health care for cyber technology: the information highway is not always a smooth road.

• Author: Colby, Kent L.

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Presidential hopefuls--John, Hillary, Barack,--all have plans for health care for Americans. Protecting Americans from the ills that debilitate or threaten to debilitate even the healthiest receives a lot of publicity.

The lifeblood of America's information highway is equally vulnerable to failure, attack, bugs, viruses and disability. So far, nary a political pundit or candidate has offered a national health care plan for Information Technology. The very concept of IT in this day and age congers images of a living, breathing, continually growing entity that is susceptible to viruses, bugs, permanent disabilities and other ills.

Like healthy Americans who turn away from free flu shots, the average employee of a typical business assumes immunity from those incapacitating hacks and evils that can harm or compromise today's business IT infrastructure, as well as individual personal computers. As in health care for social and personal ills, education is the best way to alert and make aware naive IT users.

INFORMATION SECURITY EQUALS INFORMATION HEALTH CARE

Businesses large and small are yet prep school debutantes in the world of information security. The vulnerability in the maturing and growing world of cyber information is mind-boggling, comparable to the threatening world of personal and family health care. Like health care, knowledge is good medicine. The more you know, the better equipped you are to take precautions to avoid the pitfalls that increase one's chances of disease. And in the case of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such a breach can have long lasting, negative effects.

Individuals, as well as corporate partners, may think they are immune and bury their head in the sand on the false impression it cannot happen to them. Regretfully, it can. The good news: protection is available. While protection may not be 100 percent, it does improve the odds. Knowledge is protection. Preparation is protection.

Everyone using the IT infrastructure must be aware of the risks involved. Education is the only way to increase and keep that awareness in a vanguard position. All the firewalls and virus checking software can only go so far toward protecting the network and the individual user. Company network-stored information is confidential; but corporate employees often forget about their own vulnerability.

The category of PII includes information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's...