How to survive a data breach

When Colin Crook offers advice on how companies should deal a security breach, he speaks from experience. He was CTO of Citicorp [now Citigroup, parent company of Citibank] 10 years ago when a hacker penetrated the company's network.

Crook is now senior advisor to the Wharton Fellows at the University of Pennsylvania, a member of the New York Academy of Sciences; fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and co-author of "The Power of Impossible Thinking." He shared his experiences with customers of Framingham, Mass.-based ID management firm Courion Corp. during the company's Converge05 conference last week. Business executives, he argues, must do better at listening to others and understand security is about humans, not machinery.

In the first of a two-part question-and-answer feature, Crook explains how companies can survive the fallout from a data heist.