The Planning and Care of Data

Questions such as, "How do we secure this data?" work only if you ask them at the start, and not when some lawyers or government officials are sitting in a conference room, rooting through your data and logs, and making threatening noises under their breath. All the things we care about with our data require forethought, but it seems in our rush to create "stakeholder value" we are willing to sacrifice these important attributes and just act like data gourmands, until, like Mr. Creosote in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, we explode, scattering half-digested data all over the dining room.