In a shining example of how devastating data leaks can be not only to the customer, but to the company that leaked the data, an IT company recently went out of business due to being compromised. Over the course of several months, due to lax security policies, Verus Incorporated made private medical information regarding a large number of people available to anyone.
What complicated the matter was that search engines were able to access this data and began caching is, as all good search engines do.
Verus, however, did not voluntarily disappear. Rather, after the incredible liability that the company was opened up to and the embarrassment for having such a failure, the companies investors decided it was time to cut their losses. In a matter of weeks, a company became no more, all due to a bad security policy. Particularly in companies that rely completely on exchanging or protecting information, even small leaks can have devastating effects.