In a 2005 Palm Beach Post article, Beth Givens questioned whether the early corporate culture at both DBT and Seisint allowed them to be “not very careful about who they let in the door” as clients paying for access to sensitive online files.
I had a real good laugh when I read her words regarding DBT and Seisint’s early corporate culture. If anything, that “early corporate culture” was overly cautious, being, as it was, a direct result of Hank Asher’s [sic] “blunt, gruff and combative” personality.
Having worked, briefly, of course, in that early Database Technologies (DBT) corporate culture, I am confident that the hard-working, driven, sometimes paranoid, usually stressed-out culture created by Hank Asher did not create, nor allow – in any laissez-faire manner – the recent compromises in personal data.
That is an incredible stretch.
This problem is an internet-wide, global problem that was created when the internet was created, when computers across great physical distances were intentionally made vulnerable to share data. This vulnerability was also established when credit cards were created and thieves realized there was something else to take.
Where there is a bank, there will be someone out there who will want to rob that bank – and where there is a data bank, especially one connected to the ‘net, there will be someone out there who will want to take what is in that data bank. What is happening at Seisint is only symptomatic of what is happening across the internet.
And, as blunt, gruff and combative as Hank Asher may be, lax he is not.
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