With data security breaches at an all-time high last month, the final blunder belonged to the U.S. Department of Justice as it accidentally exposed Social Security numbers on its Website. Now a new article is wondering if we will ever really get a handle on data security.

In the article from Information Week, writers Tony Kontzer and Larry Greenemeier say the Justice Department’s blunder is just the latest demonstration of the “IT problem that just won’t go away.”

“How does this keep happening?” the pair ask in the article. “Companies have been publicly humiliated, slapped with audits, and threatened with prosecution, but sensitive personal data continues to be compromised.”

The problem, they say, is that victims of security breaches are really unable to help combat the problem. “In most cases, victims can't do much more than keep a watchful eye on their financial statements and credit reports--and hope for the best,” they say.

Instead, they say security professionals must reorient themselves if they’re going to slow or stop this growing problem. That might be tough, they add. “Data can be compromised in many ways: absent-minded posting of data on Web sites, lax controls in handling backup tapes, failure to encrypt, deployment of new systems before security is adequately tested, and the hacker practice of ‘skimming’ data from magnetic strips when credit cards are slid through readers,” they say.