The Importance of American Business Information Protection It never rains but it pours, Just as bosses and boards have final

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问题             The Importance of American Business Information Protection
    It never rains but it pours, Just as bosses and boards have finally sorted out their worst accounting and compliance troubles, and improved their feeble corporation governance, a new problem threatens to earn them—especially in America—the sort of nasty headlines that inevitably lead to heads rolling in the executive suite: data insecurity. Left, until now, to odd, low level IT staff to put right, and seen as a concern only of data-rich industries such as banking, telecoms and air travel, information protection is now high on the boss’s agenda in businesses of every variety.
    Several massive leakages of customer and employee data this year—from organizations as diverse as Time Warner, the American defense contractor Science Applications International Corp and even the University of California, Berkeley—have left managers hurriedly peering into their intricate IT systems and business processes in search of potential vulnerabilities.
    "Data is becoming an asset which needs to be guarded as much as any other asset," says Haim Mendelson of Stanford University’s business school. "The ability to guard customer data is the key to market value, which the board is responsible for on behalf of shareholders." Indeed, just as there is the concept of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), perhaps it is time for GASP, Generally Accepted Security Practices, suggested Eli Noam of New York’s Columbia Business School. "Setting the proper investment level for security, redundancy , and recovery is a management issue, not a technical one," he says.
    The mystery is that this should come as a surprise to any boss. Surely it should be obvious to the dim most executive that trust, that most valuable of economic assets, is easily destroyed and hugely expensive to restore—and that few things are more likely to destroy trust than a company letting sensitive personal data get into the wrong hands.
    The current state affairs may have been encouraged—though not justified—by the lack of legal penalty (in America, but not Europe) for data leakage. Until California recently passed a law, American firms did not have to tell anyone, even the victim, when data went astray. That may change fast; lots of proposed data-security legislation is now doing the rounds in Washington, D. C. Meanwhile, the theft of information about some 40 million credit-card accounts in America, disclosed on June 17th, overshadowed a hugely important decision a day earlier by America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC), that puts corporate America on notice that regulators will act if firms fail to provide adequate data security.
In bringing up the concept of GASP the author is making the point that______.

选项 A、shareholders’ interests should be properly attended to
B、information protection should be given due attention
C、business should enhance their level of accounting security
D、the market value of customer data should be emphasized

答案B

解析 推理判断题。根据关键词GASP定位到第三段第三句。GASP这个概念由艾里·诺姆提出,他认为:为资料安全、备份、恢复设立适当的投资标准是一个管理问题,不是技术问题。可见他认为公司管理层人员不重视资料的管理。这里引用他的话承接第一、二句提到的哈伊姆·门德尔松的看法,哈伊姆认为“保护客户资料的能力是体现市场价值的关键所在”,显然艾里·诺姆也认为应该将信息保护提上议事日程,故B“信息保护问题应该受到适当的关注”为答案。第三段通过引证的手法,指出资料保护对于企业管理层非常重要。第一句表明资料正在变成一种资产,应该受到保护;第二句点明本段核心,即保护客户资料的能力能体现公司的市场价值。最后又引用艾里·诺姆的话提出资料安全问题的本质是管理问题,而不是技术问题。第三段第二句提到“保护客户资料……是董事会应该为股东承担的责任”,但这里作者关注的焦点是资料安全问题,不是股民收益问题,排除A“股东的利益应该受到适当的关照”。此处强调的是客户的信息安全问题,没有提到财务安全问题,排除C“企业应该提高自己的财务安全水平”。该句指出“保护客户资料的能力是体现市场价值的关键所在”,并未指出客户资料的市场价值,排除D“客户资料的市场价值应该加以强调”。
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