[mannykannot]

> In my experience, the threat/worry of bad publicity is actually the best motivator in a company getting their security up to par.

The banking industry got the regulation it has now because this did not work.

If the situation is as bad as you describe, then apparently not even the threat of government regulation was sufficient motivation for banks to get their act together.

[candiodari]

And as we noticed in 2000, 2008 and in the EU crises:

Regulation does not work either. For 2 main reasons:

* Regulations are stupid and do not catch all problems, which then causes those uncaught problems to become systemic and threaten not just the bank, but the entire country, because regulation often also forbids or discourages banks from checking other problems (or at the very least pushes an attitude of "if you check compliance with the regulations, security check done"

* Governments cannot be trusted to carry out the regulations ("too big to fail")