John PescatoreI guess we shouldn’t have expected much from a decade that started with Y2K hysteria, credit card number thefts exploiting numerous vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s IIS web server software, the bombing of the USS Cole and the disputed presidential election between George Bush and Al Gore.
Let’s not even talk about 2001, with the terrorist attacks, Code Red/Nimda, anthrax scares, Dot Com bubble collapses, etc. 2002 was a quiet year, but 2003 brought Slammer/Blaster and the start of the bot net mechanisms and targeted attacks – the rest of the decade was pretty much all downhill from there.
Human beings are probably the only things on the planet that keep hoping that decade X+1 will be different from decade X, or year X+1 from year X. That’s not a bad thing – that hope is a key element of why we keep inventing new things and making breakthroughs. Of course, that hope is also why people lose lots of money at slot machines and keep falling for Nigerian email banking schemes…
Information security is very different than physical security because there is no such thing as “information engineering” or, despite what you might hear, “software engineering.” Change is a constant in the technology world and information security is all about trying to minimize the risks caused by those changes. 2010 will be a year where most of the new gaps between existing security controls and changing business practices are driven by the consumerization of IT and new modes of delivering IT services, a la cloud this and cloud that.
So, to get a head start on dealing with the security problems of the new year, take a look at the pile of holiday gifts and see which ones connect to the Internet – sip some eggnog and get started on figuring out how you are going to minimize the risks of those being used by the user side. Yes, even that Zhu Zhu dancing hampster thing.
Happy Holidays, all. Work will only be a faint annoying memory to me until 4 January, see you then.
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2 Gautam Sarnaik December 27, 2009 at 4:52 am
Dear John
One man’s medicine is another man’s poison!
FYI, Business Today, India has actually labelled the decade that went as India’s best decade –
See http://businesstoday.intoday.in/index.php?option=com_magazine&opt=section§ionid=22
(Thats the issue dated Dec 27 2009 if someone clicks on the link too late …)
Happy Holidays to you too and best wishes for the upcoming New Year (and Decade).
Best regards
Gautam
3 Stiennon January 1, 2010 at 1:55 pm
I think most security vendors and even security pundits will agree that the the 20-oughts were good years. In 2000 Checkpoint was the only security company with a market cap close to a billion. Gartner only had one analyst covering network security (you). Ten years later there are a dozen security companies with market caps over $1 billion and Gartner has two dozen security analysts!
4 John Pescatore January 4, 2010 at 8:13 am
Depends on how you define good. Next year the Washington Redskins will probably hire lots of offensive lineman – because their quarterback got battered in this years 5-11 season. So, was the 2009-10 season a good season for Redskin offensive lineman because the Redskins now need to spend more on offensive lineman?
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