It's the start of the year, and so everyone is making their predictions for the next 12 months.
There are three sets, that I think make for interesting reading in the field of web safety.
Firstly, there's our own Top 8 Predictions for 2007 which focuses more on the business side of things. For consumers of interest is that we think that ISP's will start to take web security more seriously at the gateway level (so your internet connection, not the software on your computer) so expect to see changes in that direction.
Over at ZDNet Richard Stiennon has possibly the most depressing set of predictions I've seen this year, but I think he's on to something in a couple of areas:
1. 100% growth in revenue for cyber crime. There are lots of estimates for just how big the cyber crime economy is. I peg it at over $1 bllion (sic) and under $10 billion. Whatever it is today I predict that the quest for financial gain will spur cyber criminals to a banner year, at least doubling their overall take.
This is something we've seen over the last year as well. The number of financially targeted malware that our corporate customers were threatened by has just increased continuously, and is often peaking around public holidays catching people when they are at their most relaxed.
8. YouTube abuse threatens site. Like network news, email, and IM before it, the new popular service, video sharing, will succumb to spammers who post ads, ad backed videos, and stealth marketing exploits, ruining the experience for everybody.
Being everyone's favourite can have its problems and our data seems to point in this direction, we've seen a rise in malware on Web 2.0 sites in general, with Social Networking Sites showing their vulnerability.
Finally Jennifer Granick the executive director of the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, predicts the scope for change on Licences and Privacy in particular how information gathered by software and websites is or can be used. Her remarks on how the current legal frameworks protect us illustrates that there is a difference between what we might expect the case to be when we just click 'I accept'.
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