When I was recently informed that SC Magazine had its 20th anniversary upcoming, I was dumbfounded. I just got my TIS Gauntlet firewall optimized to protect my NT workstation. Still in a state of shock, I went to check on my son's diapers, and all I found was a note on his bed asking for money for his college textbooks. I guess this industry, that according to Dan Geer took flight when Microsoft introduced Windows 95 with a TCP/IP stack, really has matured.
The 20 years have gone by in a flash, and you might ask yourself, should I make plans for SC Magazine's 40th anniversary? Doubting its longevity, in Vegas parlance (another place that will still be here), is a sucker bet. Sure, in 20 years you will more likely read it on a 10th generation Kindle, or better yet, a hologram version of James Earl Jones will read it to you in bed. But the need to share our collective wisdom is not diminishing.
As I view the landscape of emerging technologies, such as mobile devices, smart electrical grids and my current passion – cloud computing, it is apparent to me that innovation has not made common cause with security, and likely never will. These technologies, and many others on the horizon, are not secure out of the box, nor will they accept retrofitted solutions. Having seen a worm capable of shutting down the power to a neighborhood, it is obvious that the stakes will only get higher as computers expand their domain of control. In 20 years we will probably just call it the security industry -- technology could become integrated with the very fabric of humanity and the terms “computing” and “information” will seem redundant.
Maybe it will simply be S Magazine. In any case, as long as we have broken technology, opportunistic crooks and those fighting the good fight, we will be thankful for an independent chronicler of our (in)security.
