Victoria's Secret Miranda Kerr photo scandal has the wrong focus

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February 11th, 2010 - Posted by Kent

Who's Dave Kiely? Dave Kiely is an employee at Australia's MacQuarie bank who's become a minor web laughing stock after he was shown looking at nearly-nude photos of a Victoria's Secret model on live TV. How did it happen? It was a familiar scene for a financial broadcast: a banker was being interviewed for a story; behind him was a field of computers manned by his colleagues. Suddenly one computer, the one belonging to Dave Kiely, flashed images of scantily clad model Miranda Kerr.

The brouhaha has largely focused on moral issues, and while some have demanded Kerr be fired, it's also become a bit of a cause celbre—well at least one celeb, Miranda Kerr. Should Kiely be fired for looking at porn? That's an HR issue. What we're more concerned about is an IT issue. Dave Kiely should not be opening image attachments at work, no matter what they're of.

Email attachments are a favorite way of spreading viruses and other malware. Kiely is a bank employee, and his computer not only has pictures of Miranda Kerr on it, but also likely has personal financial information regarding the bank's customers. Now, there's no evidence that any breach occurred. In fact it seems to be a prank and the real damage is to Kiely's reputation. But the potential is still there.

According to the article, a bank spokesman has said, "Macquarie and the employee apologize for any offense that may have been caused." And Miranda Kerr hopes he doesn't lose his job over a little ogling. But all of this misses the point, because the real threat is not to morals, but to customer security.