Everyone's security is awful, as the penalty for failure is less than the expense required to make it secure. Until the former becomes higher the latter will guarantee insecurity rules.
I think better security and encryption protocols need to be developed that mitigate the severity of a single leak. Without more compartmentalization of data and more control put into the hands of users, leaks of these massive, un-encrypted databases appear inevitable.
This would result in insurance policies to guarantee against that outcome. Those policies in turn would introduce both costs and practices across industries that would improve the security of all the insured (and indirectly, their customers).
Unlike hiring a Rainmaker to look nice for the C-suite, imposing these costs would make sure that there's effective mitigations. Just like safety matters for your car, it would start to matter for your software.
Equifax had over $100mm of cybersecurity insurance coverage [1]. The breach cost them over $2bn, including fines. This isn't purely a motivation problem.
[1] https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2020/02/13/equifax-...
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3410278/the-biggest-data-b...
or at least tens of millions in the EU thanks to GDPR:
https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
We understand it's nothing compared to their profits but is it nothing compared to the cost of basic security?
If I take a clunker to a mechanic, how much will it cost me to hear everything that needs fixing? About $150. But actually performing the fixes? One order of magnitude greater - and that's if I'm very, very lucky!