Evildoer Update

If you want to understand security you can't ignore the economics as Bruce Schneier likes to point out. If you take phishing for example you can't expect the consumer or their ISP to spend much on the problem -- it's the financial institutions with brand and reputation at risk that the have most to gain from anti-phishing and therefore the most to spend. Early on when most of the phishing discussions were on technical solutions we were delighted to talk to the Cyota team because they very much thought of themselves as a service organization to financial service companies that happened also to bring some interesting technology to bear. Cyota was acquired by RSA and we hadn't talked to them since until recently we had a chance to get an update on the state of the evildoer art. It's pretty chilling. If you think we're making a lot of progress getting cyber crime under control you probably need to think again. It's not that good work isn't being done by Cyota and others. The problem is that the "enemy" includes some very bright and highly motivated criminals. It makes you think that maybe the right answer is ripping out the phone line and putting duct tape over unused electric outlets to keep them at bay.