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In the Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Arthur Dent complains that he had not been warned that his house would demolished to make way for a new bypass:

"But the plans were on display . . ."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"

The final episode of the second series of the modern BBC adaptation of Sherlock Holmes opens with serious security breaches at the Bank of England, The Tower of London and Pentonville Prison. The breaches are apparently caused by a piece of malware created by Holmes' nemesis Moriarty.
Towards the end of the episode, Moriarty reveals that the malware is a hoax: it does not exist. Instead the security breaches were caused by collaboration by insiders induced by threats and bribes.
This storyline is a modern parable for data protection: it's easier to hack the people than the technology.

After the English riots in the summer of 2011, commentators observed that criminal behaviour was influenced as much by social norms as the legal system. Some illegal acts are socially acceptable. If you get caught exceeding the speed limit and 'fess up at a middle class dinner table, you will likely be greeted with sympathy and with comments such as "why aren't the police out catching real criminals?"

If asked to invent the worst possible data protection nightmare, I wouldn’t have to: it already exists, and it’s called a fax. Imagine a medium which allows you to put any information on it in a completely uncontrolled way on a completely open format for all to see. Then take this medium and feed it into a machine where it is directed by using a long string of pseudo random numbers, which is almost but not exactly the same as a phone number.

In spite of the best efforts of many software developers, IT projects have a poor reputation for failure, associated with errors, budget over-runs and delays.
Even more depressing, the 10 reasons given below are not new. So why re-state them? Because until we address them, the perception of failure will continue.
1. People don't remember the successes
Developers often tell me that people only remember their failures. Possibly true. But isn't this reasonable? Shouldn't a working system fit for its intended purpose be a perfectly reasonable expectation on the part of users?

IT PhDs
There are many different types of IT PhDs. According to your choice of problem you can treat your IT PhD as engineering, social science business and management, physical science or even mathematics. In many cases, the actual computing component is the means to deliver the PhD, rather than the PhD itself.
How to do an Information Technology PhD, IT PhDs, Information Systems