Taming the Hacking Storm

Chapter 1How Bad Is Internet Security?

As I shared in the preface, the biggest surprise of my more than 36-year cybersecurity career is just how widespread cybercrime is today and that no person, group, company, or organization is really doing anything significantly different to fix it. Most cyber defenses are just tiny incremental updates of past safeguards that did not work that well, and anything that might actually make a big impact doesn’t get wide acceptance. This chapter covers some relevant current Internet crime statistics and risk factors, starting with why we have to fix Internet security.

Internet crime is so bad that many people who see the statistics I present in this chapter for the first time will likely be shocked. Internet crime is very, very common, far surpassing what most people experience in the real world. It’s a hundred million of this, a billion of that, and a trillion bad things of this other thing. The numbers can be quite startling and even seem nonsensical at times, but let’s get started.

Arguments for Fixing Internet Security

Cybercrime impacts nearly every aspect of modern life, from personal privacy to global economies, yet the solutions currently in place are woefully inadequate. Without significant change, the costs and risks will only continue to escalate.

The following are some arguments for why the current state of Internet security is unacceptable.

Increased Internet Criticality

When the Internet really started taking off to become ...