Lots of TalkTalk, little action

In the wake of today's news of the Dixons Carphone data hack affecting 10 million customers accessing 5.9 million payment cards, what should this the company learn from the experience?

Not so long ago, TalkTalk suffered a similar fate, challenging then CEO Dido Harding to answer investors, journalists, employees and customers with specifics on what the company would do to restore trust while heeding her legal advisers to say as little as possible.

With the emergence of many other data breaches, not least Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, it is clear that Dixons Carphone can learn lessons from these victims by communicating openly, frequently and specifically in order to reassure its stakeholders and start to earn back lost trust.

Every company can be the target of a data breach, which should wake up leaders and Boards to the need for better IT literacy to ensure such risks are not just on the radar screen, but that there is a strategy in place to reduce the risk, combined with clear plans of action on recovery.

As data increasingly is the blood for most businesses, identifying where lies exposure to infection should be top of the agenda. Clearly large organisations have some work still to do to ensure their investments in safeguarding their customers and trust-building are not wasted.