It’s taken me a bit of time to write this article. I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to express my concern for all of us without it sounding like I’m belittling the concerns of those affected by this unfortunate event.

Then I realized – that pretty much says it. Please take the sentiments that will follow in that context.

Before we go any further, I want to repeat the disclosure I made in the article I wrote on Tuesday. I serve  on Network Solutions’ Social Web Advisory Board. It’s necessary to state that because my relationship with them may bias my opinion under certain circumstances. This is not one of those instances.

(And if you know me, you probably realize that it won’t stop me from saying what’s on my mind any way. Most likely to my detriment, my opinion can’t be swayed for less than $2 million, and my integrity is not for sale, ever. )

All joking aside though (about the $2 million, not my integrity. I like to joke that I have a price but it’s more like $20 million, if I have one), this article is my perspective on several things that surrounded the recent breach of security at Network Solutions. I have three.

1. The overly harsh and at times, inaccurate press that occurred when the story broke. I expect that from mainstream media, not online.
2. The fact that what I saw as the most important part of the story was rarely, if ever discussed, although it’s far more important. Instead the often incorrect story that was in the press cast the company in a pretty dark light, given that Network Solutions did everything we have been asking big companies to do when these things happen.
3. Since NS (I’m tired of writing out Network Solutions!) did what they were supposed to do, why were there such harsh reactions to what happened?

Let’s start with the stories. I was on vacation when it broke, so I didn’t get to provide any input on how to manage coverage before it hit the press. In fact, it was reading about NS from my Google Alerts and seeing them start to pop in more frequently than usual that I realized something had happened. And I saw stories saying that NS “puts 570,000+ customer credit cards at risk” which while technically true makes it sound like NS was negligent in some way.

As I do with all stories I see about a company that deals with ecommerce or the web on any level, I went to several stories to get a fuller picture of what had happened. From skimming various headlines it sounded like NS had done something wrong and intentionally. Rather than  having discovering and reporting a crime had likely been committed, it sounded from the coverage like they had committed one.

Meaning, that’s the type of headline you expect to see when a company finds out something happens, covers it up and pretends that nothing happened, knowing there are no negative connotations to them sweeping it under the rug. For something like this you’d expect to see more coverage that described accurately what happened, like, “Network Solutions warns merchants after hack“.

Sure, the headline isn’t as sexy, but at least I’ll continue to trust that organizations news. I’m just as much a fan of a grabby headline as the next marketer, but hype for the sake of hype is worse than a boring headline. At least an informative one is honest.

The reason it concerns me so much isn’t that the affected company is Network Solutions.

It may seem so, but if you follow that logic to its conclusion, you’d see that someone in my position wants to work with the companies that need help, or my company doesn’t exist. One could argue that if they didn’t have issues like this come up, they might not need a Social Web Advisory Board, and then they wouldn’t need me – who would that help? Not me.

Every help desk employee secretly loves Microsoft.

My concern is that the way in which this affects all of us was mentioned, let alone addressed, in very few stories. In fact, I spent the better part of yesterday and today trying to find a few articles that did, and had to go through hundreds of them just to find a handful.

We’ll come back to that. First I want to give some examples of what NS did right. I’m sure you’ll be able to recall many, many instances in which otherwise successful companies have swept incidents under the rug instead of acting on information that might affect their clients.

Yet in this case, Network Solutions did what we now believe companies should do:

• Discovered something that could hurt a sub-set of their clients
• Reported it to their clients (albeit after a delay that I personally thought was too long)
• Despite being an extremely powerful company that could easily get away with not being accountable, they stepped up to the plate and took the public beating like a champ. Every time a blog post popped up, you saw Shashi and his team responding.
• At no point did they attempt to have the story spun in their favor – they took it on the chin, even though they were completely compliant with the expected security measures needed, and in fact, did more than they were required to by law, both before and after the breach to address the issue.
• Created support avenues for those affected to recover as well as possible.

Of course, I subscribe to the philosophy most vigorously posited by Chris Rock that you shouldn’t get a cookie for doing something that you’re supposed to do. And that’s what we as consumers feel companies are supposed to do when a mistake happens reagardless of fault.

However, in reading comments on some of the news stories I read, i saw really appalling comments about the incident that made me think the people reading them read the headlines and nothing else.

If that’s how the public reacts when companies do the right thing, what’s their incentive for continuing to do so? I’m not saying that NS is going to hide hack attempts in the future. I’m saying that other big companies are watching these things happen and their number crunchers are including these reactions in whether the cost of doing the right thing is worth it in the long run.

Sad but true.

We have the power to influence those decisions, and we should.

But okay, I got that sermon off my chest. What’s really under my skin? What’s really the super-big deal about this story that I believe most reporters missed?

As I pointed out, NS did everything they were supposed to do. They were compliant with all the necessary security measures and as I understand it, took additional precautions as well.

So if they were compliant, how did a company with their resources get hacked? Probably because the hackers have gotten much smarter than the technology put in place to stop them from breaching our security. And if it happened to Network Solutions, then what can those of us with fewer resources do to protect ourselves?

I don’t store any credit card information of any of my clients, in fact, I do my  best not to ever come into contact with it. If you buy something from me, your card gets verified in the most secure fashion available, and processed, but not stored. Then you get your product or service. So I’m not touching information as sensitive as a credit card until my company is so big, we can’t help it.

But sometimes email addresses, sensitive company information, even trade secrets, come across my desk, and I have occasion to give mine to other people. And being a former help desk computer nerd (still a nerd, just not on the help desk), I go through levels of securing that information that border on the paranoid.

I’m sure you do at least what is necessary to keep yourself out of trouble. But what if that isn’t enough? What if the most secure precautions we can take are not enough.

It wasn’t enough for Network Solutions.

The very thought was a huge wake-up call to me.

And after several weeks of research, I don’t have the answers to that. But here are three articles I think you should read if you share the same concerns as I do and want to find those answers.

Two are about the issues surrounding PCI Compliance and proposed resolutions to the PCI debate. One is about the best practices of dealing with this type of crisis, should you find yourself in a similar position. We all hope we won’t, but it’s a smart move to know exactly what Network Solutions did right, just in case.

I couldn’t let Friday night pass without giving you some of the best news I’ve heard in a while. (I’d say Saturday morning, but I know my entrepreneur friends – you’re up working just like me. You went out, you came home, you worked some more. Admit it.)

If you remember our last Site of the Day, you know that I don’t give these honors out lightly.

So why the Small Business Success Index? What about that site can help you build your business online?

The way I see it, knowing you’ll have a business to build this time next year helps dramatically. That seems like a pretty strong reason to care to me – and not just because much of my business is with small business owners. I’m an entrepreneur, after all.

Let’s look a little more closely at why this site is so important to those of us with smaller companies.

In a time when the pressure of the economy is being felt in ways most of us have never witnessed in our lifetimes, you know who’s not worried?

Us. Small business people.

When I first heard this I was skeptical . Then I came across proof.

And you know how I just love hard evidence and numbers — I’m always saying listen to people who make sense to you, test out their theories, and believe the results, the proof, the data, even about me.

I love it when the numbers agree with my gut reaction. Call it an extra ego stroke, but I get a buzz from knowing that

a- I was right, and
b- Other people agree with me.

Of coruse, that’s where the Small Business Success Index (SBSI) comes in. It’s hosted at GrowSmartBusiness.com, which is full of research put together by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

They say it better than I do, so I’ll quote from the page about SBSI’s survey of over 1000 small business owners:

The benchmark survey, which gathered data used to create the Small Business Success Index, was conducted in December 2008 and January 2009; a total of 1,000 small business owners were interviewed by phone. The Small Business Success Index found the following:

• Small businesses are succeeding despite the economic downturn.
• 69% of small businesses made a profit in 2008
• 7% of small businesses report that they broke even
• The majority (69%) of those who showed a profit in 2008 said it was equal to or better than the previous year
• 70% of small businesses expect their firms to still be operating in five years as opposed to being closed, sold or transferred, and of these, 66% expect to be bigger in size

How’s that for good news?

If you’re not seeing the connection, here it is: small business employs more people in this country than big business. We drive the economy. We’re quite a pragmatic group so we don’t cheer easily. Therefore, for things to be in this big of a mess and us to be optimistic? Bodes well for everyone.

Or as a post from the official Network Solutions blog put it:

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, “American small businesses are the bedrock of the U.S. economy. There are more than 25 million of them in the to the Census Bureau. They employ more than 58 million people, that is a greater number of jobs than big companies, and they create more new jobs each year than any other sector.”

Before I came across the SBSI I thought maybe this was just all the Small Business Owners that I knew.

My original theory was that more companies are starting to see that they can get better results from leveraging PR, online and offline publicity and marketing than just paying for search advertising, so I thought perhaps only marketing-related companies were getting a boost in new business from this change in climate.

Apparently, the news is better than I thought – small business is doing much better than I expected, across the board.

This hopeful data isn’t all the site has to offer, either. There are also lots of tools at their site to help small business owners, including their Small Business Survey, which will help you assess how well your business is doing competitively.

For more, go visit GrowSmartBusiness.com, and read Brent Leary’s Tale of Two Studies over at AMEX’s Open Forum. (Brent’s the co-author of Barack 2.0 with our friend David Bullock.)

He also interviewed the Network Solutions CEO, Roy Dunbar, at his Social CRM site.