OOPs, an Apology is Due

Last Friday, in a posting on ACC cyber security publications I blamed an “over zealous writer on Sys-Con.com” for exaggerating about the extent of a “‘recent’ release of a series of documents by American Chemistry Council on cyber security issues”. I owe the owner of Sys-Con.com an apology for that erroneous conclusion. The only reason that I don’t owe an apology to the ‘over zealous writer’ is that there was no such writer on Sys-Con.com; the article was a straight re-print of an ACC press release that I found yesterday. Beyond that, I still maintain that the wording of the article exaggerates the amount of work that was recently released by ACC. According to the ACC Guidance Document page and the White Paper page, only one of the seven documents listed in the article was released this year. Shame on the ACC for using an editorial license issued in Hollywood or Capital Hill for this press release. The announcement of the release of the Guidance on the Protection of Intellectual Property would have been worthy of a press release all of its own without attempting to inflate its importance by adding six previously released papers to the announcement. In the long run, I believe that this document may be more important than all of the other documents listed because more companies will be affected by electronic intellectual property theft than will ever have their control systems violated by a terrorist.