Unfortunately, the financial liability portion of retained personal information rarely shows up on an organization's financial balance sheet. And yet it is indeed a liability: the impact on an organization when cybercriminals steal that information or when the information is misused is real, in the form of breach response costs, the costs related to reducing harm inflicted on affected parties (think of credit monitoring services, a frequent remedy for stolen credit card numbers), fines from governmental regulators, and the occasional class-action lawsuit.