2006 - Year in Review

Year in Review

2006 is drawing to a close, and not to be outdone by my peers I thought I would highlight some of the things I thought were important this year in the industry:

1. My open challenge to the Navy to get their networks under control.

The Naval War College had to shut down their network for 2 weeks after they were hacked. If this was a business, taps would have been playing by now.

No one has accepted the challenge.

I met with the Navy earlier this year, and their integrator SAIC to discuss Identity Management and protecting the Navy from unwanted visitors and this still happened. Are my expectations too high? I think not. When there is a piece of technology that can be installed in a day, that can keep hackers out by controlling the dial tone of the line they use to hack you, there is no excuse. NONE.

2. Convergence of Identity, Privacy, and Security.

This was very obvious in the reported number of breaches and legislation this year.

We passed the 100,000,000 identities breached mark. This means that 1 in 2 Americans have had their data accessed and possibly sold and used. I wonder if this can be used to our advantage come tax time.

3. The costs of breaches are going up, yet still happening at an unprecedented clip

The Ponemon Institute tallied up the cost of a breach per record and it was pegged out at $182 of tangible costs to a company.

4. Patty Dunn and the HP debacle.

I wonder if the tell all book or mini series will be the first to market. Maybe a soap opera?

5. Let’s not forget those who won’t be down for breakfast:

Ken Lay, James Brown, James Kim, Gerald Ford, Dana Reeves, Joe Barbera, Peter Boyle, Bo Schembechler, Jack Palance, Ed Bradley, Red Auerbach, Cory Lidle, Byron Nelson, Ann Richards, Steve Irwin, Bruno Kirby, Mike Douglas, Robert Brooks, Syd Barrett, Aaron Spelling, Patsy Ramsey, Vince Welnick, Paul Gleason, Don Knotts, Earl Woods, Louis Rukeyser, Casper Weinberger, Slobodan Milosevic, Kirby Puckett, Peter Benchley, Coretta Scott King, Chris Penn, and Lou Rawls.

My predictions for 2007

1. Identity Management at the Network Layer will gather more steam since Identity and Security will continue their convergence.

2. Machine Identity will be a bigger issue than it was in 2006, especially with all the talk of NAC and Endpoint Control

3. We will hit the *reported* 200,000,000 records breached by August because the bad guys are better at sharing information of how to do a breach than the good guys are at preventing one.

identitystuff @ gmail.com