My Security Predictions for 2007 ... Go!

Finally ... the wait is over. In a few short seconds, my security predictions will be unleashed onto the world. Prepare to be ... underwhelmed (he-he, just kidding!)

Unlike last year, I won't muddy the waters with scores and ratings, but will just say it: predicting is easy if you go for the obvious trends that everybody sees ("hackers will hack, phishers will phish, spammers will spam, bot herders will bot herd, other criminals will, eh, do crimes!" and - yes! - both bad and good stuff will happen in ample quantities). Last year I erred on the side of caution and got every single prediction right. Promise I will be more aggressive - and thus more fun - this time :-)

I. Platforms: Vista will have no impact on the overall risk level of most organizations out there. Yes, some holes will certainly be plugged (and I even agree that "Vista is the most secure version ever", just like every single one of its predecessors was - in its time), but others - possibly of types we don't even know about - will crop up. Sorry, but secure platform =/= secure Internet (kinda like you wearing a Kevlar vest doesn't lower crime in the neighborhood).

II. New technologies: no credible technology that can alone "solve" the problem of insider threat will emerge (many will try); the insider threat problem is just too broad, diverse and rich to be solved by a single technology or even a single vendor (corollary: if somebody is trying to sell you such a technology that claims to do exactly that on its own, then - well, you know what to do ...)

III. Security market: we will see more than a few firesales and possibly total and miserable security vendor failures (wonna bet which legacy SIEM vendor will die first? :-)) There are way too many companies who sell some random and often irrelevant "protection" which sometimes doesn't even work ... at their own demo ... when their CTO demos it ... the third time ...

IV. Risk management: a confusion about what is "risk management" will not subside this year. Business risk? Information risk? Risk as threat x vulnerability x asset? Risk as probability of loss? Arrrghh! - It goes on and on and on. No standard accepted definition of risk management in the field of infosec will emerge.

V. NAC: of course, no list of 2007 prediction is valid without mentioning knack :-) And you know what? NAC will shrink, NOT grow in importance this year! This is where the rubber meets the road and fish start to swim upstream :-) - this prediction started from me reading Richard's piece "NAC is Fighting the Last War" which struck me like a Strength 15 Lighting Bolt. Indeed, narrowly defined NAC largely targets worm infections (and will thus lose relevance) while broadly defined NAC starts to sound like having a well-run network (which is as relevant today as it was in 1992 and probably 2012 as well). The Planet NAC is about to experience a premature eclipse :-)

VI. 0-days: 2006 was the year when this previously obscure term fell victim to malignant marketEErs. 2007 will see more of the same, no doubt. But what about the real 0-day-wielding attackers, poking jokes at the above "oh-day defenders"? Security research into new types of vulnerabilities will certainly continue and more types of previously "safe" (rather, "erroneously thought of as safe") types of content will be used to attack applications. MPG with 0day? AVI with 0day? And, our old friends doc, xls, ppt and now PDF. On the other hand, a major 0-day worm still won't happen.

VII. IP and ID theft, data loss: at the risk of sounding hilariously obvious, I would state that such incidents of ID theft (phishing, etc), broader intellectual property (IP) theft and loss will continue largely unabated. Will we, the security community, try to stop it? Of course, but nowhere near hard enough ...

VIII. Compliance: but of course! Did you think I'd miss this bad boy? Mandatory regulatory initiatives that pack a bite or a punch, such as PCI, will continue to spread and thus grow in importance, while jokes like HIPAA will continue to languish, helping my # VII prediction come true with a bang ... At the same time, I am undecided on the voluntary frameworks that you can choose to comply with (ISO17799/270001, COBIT, ITIL, etc) - will they take off like a rocketship or remain steadily interesting to some? Only time will tell.

IX. Security awareness: well, security awareness will ... ah, come on, just laugh: bua-ha-ha-ha-haaa :-)

X. Finally, I would like to reiterate a few of the last year's predictions that will still ring true this year. Client-side and application-level (especially, web application) vulnerabilities will still be outrunning the server-side and platform-level ones. Major wireless attacks and malware will still not destroy the world.

So, there you have it! Enjoy, comment, slam, compliment, etc! And remember - just as one cannot predict the threats of tomorrow today, one still won’t be able to do in 200X. And in 20XY :-) And - but I am going out on a limb here - in 2XYZ! :-)

All predictions for 2007 that I've seen are tagged here.

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