We asked security experts to give us their industry predictions for the New Year. Here's what Robert Scheier had to say. As is my wont, I'll go more for business/management related predictions than technical predictions. Despite renewed concerns over security in the wake of the September terrorist attacks, senior management at most companies will remain complacent about security and unwilling to invest significant new funds in security. Instead, they will shift money already in the enterprise security budget to the latest, most high profile threat. More money will go to disaster recovery/business continuity than to improving security, unless and until a major cyber-attack significantly harms the American government or a major American business. Despite increased concerns about security, most end users will continue to ignore virtually all security precautions they are asked to take. Any voluntary or manual security precaution, such as changing passwords or keeping passwords secure, will still seem like too much trouble against a threat which doesn't seem real. This is one area where President Bush's call to "keep living your lives as you always did" will unfortunately resonate. Companies that really have mission-critical security needs will adopt mandatory security mechanisms such as token-based security.
Robert L. Scheier
Robert is a 15-year veteran of the computer industry trade press,
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Michael S. Mimoso, Editorial Director
most recently as technology editor at Computerworld. He is now a freelance writer specializing in security, storage, wireless and Windows 2000-related issues. Each month, Scheier's Security Product Roundup at searchSecurity provides an overview of hot trends and products in one area of the security industry.
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