Security in a Web 2.0+ World: A Standards-Based Approach

Chapter 2. The Costs and Impact of Cyber Security

	It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
	--Thomas Sowell-economist

Executive Summary

There is a story often told of two men who are walking across the Steppes when they stumble across a lion that has not fed for some time. For the lion, dinner has just come knocking. The two men begin to run for their lives. The slower of the two notices that his partner is not running at full speed, keeping just one step in front and appearing rather undisturbed by the ordeal of being chased by a hungry lion. "What are you doing?" he asks his partner? "I am fast," the other partner says, "but not faster than the lion. "Still, I don't need to be faster than the lion, only faster than you, my friend."

On the surface this story serves as a convenient metaphor for the way in which security is currently practiced in the business world. It is also a cautionary tale for those charged with protecting their firm's assets. Lions, and for that matter most other predators, follow the law of the jungle preying exclusively on the weakest members of a herd, and hunting only as a means to stave off the threat of starvation and guarantee their survival.

Predators in the world of cyberspace, by contrast, follow a very different code, and their behaviour is far less predictable and far less honorable than that of the lion. For these cyber predators hunting is about conquering and destroying and rarely about survival.

In the cyber ...