IT security: Something's gotta give

2004 is just over a month old but it's already been an eventful year for information security with the MyDoom worm carving its name into the annals as the most malicious code cocktail ever. MyDoom demonstrated that with a bit of social engineering, users will always be duped into opening attachments. Once in progress, MyDoom launched an avalanche of e-mails clogging networks and servers while interrupting business productivity. It then launched denial-of-service attacks on SCO and Microsoft. And as if this wasn't enough, it opened backdoors creating a global army of zombies poised to relay spam or launch the next denial-of-service onslaught.

Obviously, MyDoom almost guarantees another big quarter for security vendors. Manic executives who couldn't send or receive e-mail for a few days are bound to read the riot act to IT and security types to fix the problem. IT managers in turn will purchase a new round of security piece parts to plug the holes and proudly proclaim, "Mission accomplished." (Of course, they can't anticipate future problems so they'll probably have to repeat this fire drill again and again.)

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