ComputerWorld - Defensive Computing: Why the bad guys are winning

June 1, 2011
by Michael Horowitz

There was a show on CNBC recently about cyber threats. The show was pretty much what you would expect when an organization ventures away from its core competence. Imagine if Computerworld did a story on derivatives or CDOs.

As is typical of the mainstream media covering computer topics, most of those interviewed were self-serving. People and companies that make a living defending computer systems, saying how bad things are and thus implying how necessary their services are. We've seen this before.

Sadly, the show did nothing to educate viewers about Defensive Computing. I guess there are no ratings in telling people to eat their virtual vegetables. The Firesheep demo didn't even refer to Firesheep by name so an interested viewer wouldn't know what to search for online.

Still, it got me thinking. The data breaches that we hear about are surely a small percentage of those that are known. And, the known breaches are, in turn, a percentage of all those that have occurred. Even given this, we now seem to be in breach-of-the-day mode.

So why are the bad guys winning?

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