I came across the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, while conducting a search that turned up the chronology of data breaches, which provides details on 4,725 data breaches that have been made public since 2005. The website allows you to search for data breaches by type of breach, type of organization, and the year in which it occurred--some very valuable information.
In 2016, as breaches continue to be common place across almost all industries, we are going to need to take the chronology of data breaches up a notch. I would like to see an API be made available for the valuable database. As I do, I write stories about what I'd like to see in the space, and forward the link to key actors, and tell the story to the public at large, in hopes of inciting something to happen.
Making the data breach information available via API, would encourage more storytelling around the events, which could include much more meaningful visualizations using solutions like D3.js. Information about companies, could be included into other business search and discovery tooling, and more push notification networks could be setup that could keep industry experts more informed about what is happening across the sector.
Now that I am on the subject, it would make sense if all the privacy topics, and other resources available via the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse accessible through a simple API interface. If you work with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and would like to talk about making this happen, feel free to reach out. If you are someone who would like to help work on this project, or possibly fund this work, also please let me know.
The type of information the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse is aggregating is only going to become more important in the insecure cyber world we have created, and making it accessible for reading and writing via a simple API, would significantly help the organization make a bigger impact, and educate a larger audiences.
