The Open Internet's Growing Security Problem

Evidence mounts that the real problem on the Internet is not that the Internet is not open enough, but that it is not as safe/secure as it needs to be.

• See the Washington Post article today: "Data breaches are up almost 50%, affecting records of 35.7 million people."
  • "...annual statistics mask the extent of the problem; many businesses fail to report data breaches."
• See ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn's article: "The Biggest Threat to Open source in 2009" -- which spotlights the dirty little secret that open source projects don't have an update process, the fundamental method to address, patch or fix new Internet/software security problems in a timely and effective manner.
  • As Mr. Blankenhorn highlights: "There is no longer any doubt that hackers and malware writers are going after open source projects as they once went after Windows. Vulnerabilities are being found, discovered, created, exchanged. The best protection against vulnerabilities is to keep software updated, but most open source lacks update services." 
• Also see Mr. Blankenhorn's earlier piece: "Which open source projects are most secure?" where he notes that Yahoo had one project in the top ten, but Google had none of the most secure open source software projects.
• An Information Week article today reports that open Internet innovation “Twitter has a Security Meltdown.”
• "Twitter's security melted down on Monday in the face of a phishing campaign directed at Twitter users and the hacking of Twitter's support software."
• A Network World piece today on the top ten enablers of spam in the world has a co-founder of the Open Internet Coalition as the #4 spam enabler in the world.
• Then there's last month's great Zero Day Threat post by USA Today's Byron Acohido entitled: "Cyber-Katrina is upon us" where he spotlights in great detail the open Internet reality that "cyber-threats are accelerating." 
  • "...But the bad guys are proving far superior at sharing intelligence and forging alliances to defeat these systems. They are executing intrusions, stealing data and carrying out Internet-enabled cyber scams on an unprecedented scale."

Bottom line: It is becoming increasingly clear that the open Internet has a serious and growing Internet security problem.