![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Lost in Transitation
Feb. 26th, 2005 05:20 pmIt was interesting to read on the front page of the Financial Times this morning that Bank of America had mislaid tapes of data on 1.2 million customers. Careless, one might thing. Bank Of America, in case you didn't know, is really Nationsbank, an operation that expanded rapidly in the 1990s, finishing off with the purchase of BofA and a rebranding as BofA, although all the senior guys came from Nationsbank.
Anyway, companies that are very good at taking over other companies and expanding (at which Nationsbank was an undeniable master) often aren't that good at running things once the expansion is done. Bank of America said about the cock-up "we take our commitment to security and privacy very seriously" and that they "deeply regretted" the incident. By taking it seriously, what BofA means is that they know this is a public relations disaster and they deeply wish that it hadn't happened because heads are likely to roll. In other words, it's serious for them, now. If they actually took the commitment sufficiently seriously in the first place, it wouldn't have happened.
Whenever something like this happens the PR guy is wheeled out to say that Ajax Widget Makers "take the reliability of our widgets very seriously" just after the widget has fallen in half and caused a $5bn jet fighter to crash into its own airfield. Why doesn't some journalist then ask "then why the hell did it happen?"
Anyway, should you find any tapes between California and Wyoming (or wherever the "undisclosed storage facility" is) please return to Bank of America, Greensboro, North Carolina.
Anyway, companies that are very good at taking over other companies and expanding (at which Nationsbank was an undeniable master) often aren't that good at running things once the expansion is done. Bank of America said about the cock-up "we take our commitment to security and privacy very seriously" and that they "deeply regretted" the incident. By taking it seriously, what BofA means is that they know this is a public relations disaster and they deeply wish that it hadn't happened because heads are likely to roll. In other words, it's serious for them, now. If they actually took the commitment sufficiently seriously in the first place, it wouldn't have happened.
Whenever something like this happens the PR guy is wheeled out to say that Ajax Widget Makers "take the reliability of our widgets very seriously" just after the widget has fallen in half and caused a $5bn jet fighter to crash into its own airfield. Why doesn't some journalist then ask "then why the hell did it happen?"
Anyway, should you find any tapes between California and Wyoming (or wherever the "undisclosed storage facility" is) please return to Bank of America, Greensboro, North Carolina.
