Security Stories Past and Future

It's January 2008, and that means Security Pro VIP has now been bringing you great security how-to articles on the Web and in .pdf format for a full year. I hope the Web and .pdf delivery mechanisms are working well for you.

As one year ends and another begins, it's fun to review what happened over the last 12 months and peek forward to what's coming in the next 12. I glanced back over our security news coverage of the last year and was not surprised to find that consolidation among security product vendors was a big story in 2007, as it was in 2006. In June 2007 alone, we learned about HP buying SPI Dynamics, PatchLink buying SecureWave (the combined company now goes by the name Lumension Security), SonicWALL buying Aventail, and IBM buying Watchfire.

Companies and other organizations losing sensitive customer data also continued to be a big story in 2007. At the beginning of the year, we probably heard way more than we wanted to about retailer TJX losing customer data to theft. More recently, two disks containing the unencrypted personal information of 25 million British citizens were lost in transit between two British government offices, causing much concern and governmental embarrassment. Unfortunately, these probably won't be the last stories we hear about data losses.

The Apple iPhone got a lot of attention in mid-2007—first, when it debuted and then when the phone was hacked to untether it from its exclusive AT&T network affiliation and to install various unapproved applications onto it.

Hackers continue to find inventive ways to disrupt our lives. New attacks that appeared in 2007 and that are likely to continue this year involve malware and phishing attempts distributed via popular Web and Web 2.0 sites.

Windows Vista was released in 2007, and Windows Server 2008 is coming soon. Microsoft releasing new OSs is always big news, and the two OS versions have a lot of security enhancements. Security Pro VIP has already featured quite a few articles describing how to work with the new capabilities, and more are in the works. I hope you find this information helpful as you move to the new Windows versions over time.

To keep up with security news throughout 2008, visit the Security Pro VIP Web site regularly. Security news stories are archived at Windows IT Pro's Security News page. You can check the Security Pro VIP article archive to find the Vista, Server 2008, and other security how-to articles we published on the Web in 2007.

Here's hoping we all have a happy and secure New Year!