Expert View: The Hack Around The Corner

I have seen the future. And it is broken.

It's been a lousy year on multiple security fronts. And the glum assessment is that things are only getting worse.

Increased hacker sophistication and the rise of crime as a prime hacker motivator, have resulted in a supple and ambitious enemy, ready to shift strategies and techniques as known vulnerabilities are patched, eliminated, or walled-off.

Or as new opportunities arise.

We are on the cusp of an explosion of new technologies into mainstream usage, both in enterprise and consumer spaces. Web services and applications, radio frequency-identification (RFID), ubiquitous wireless access, and smarter, more hackable cell phones are among the technologies likeliest to attract hacker attention. Security vendors and forward-looking security professionals are already preparing for the next wave of threats, the next cyber-battlefields.Don't think the old-wave attacks and strategies will go away—they'll still be with us, but in more dastardly forms. Windows attacks are increasingly complex, able to exploit multiple vulnerabilities simultaneously. Phishing and cyberextortion schemes are growing alarmingly more aggressive. And few doubt that a new mega-worm or virus is waiting to erupt.

That is the face of the cyber-security future. It looks a lot like the present, only worse.

A longstanding bit of military insight warns against spending too much time preparing to fight the most recent war. The wise commander invests in preparations for the battle waiting beyond the next horizon, not the previous one.

It's a lesson worth remembering as the next wave of potential threats quickly becomes real.