What do you think this is?

I think we have all recentrly received one (and probably more) of these wonderful mails stating "we have your data, if you want us to keep talking to you let us know". In case you were wondering, this is a side effect of GDPR; and in my opinion an excellent one. Yet many people - including some respected and high profile GDPR experts and "experts" - take the opportunity to attack the senders. But I think this is the wrong reaction.

Some major breaches have seen the light of day lately, and everybody agrees that they will keep coming. I don't believe you will find any security professional respecting himself to tell you that this will stop. The reasons are many, but the most important one is the (lack of) security design. Systems, processes and services have been moving to production without security design for years. And unfortunately in many cases they still do.

In our (security) profession it is becoming common to jump on each other's throat; and the result is the public blaming of the CISO involved - like leaving them alone to take some hard steps in the middle of no man's land.