Predictions for 2008

I will not guess at who will be the next US president, or what the stock markets will do, but here are my thoughts on the development of computer security products.

Existing trends will continue. There will be fewer stand alone products and more suites. Publishers who have good technologies will continue to be bought out, or engage in lucrative licensing deals. Improvements will be incremental. There will be no breakthrough technologies reaching the consumer level.

Behavior analysis detection will become widespread in AV products and integration among the various components will increase to the point where there will be significant disincentives to disable on component in favor of a solution from another publisher.

The flood of malware for profit will continue unabated. Law enforcement based on 19th century concepts will not catch up for several more years, if not a decade. Flaws in the legal infrastructure that place the burden of losses from fraudulently obtained credit cards on merchants, rather than the card issuers, will continue to provide incentives for computer criminals. The large percentage of Windows systems with expired AV's and inoperative firewalls will not change by much. Vista users will disable UAC in droves, thus neutering the most significant security feature in the new OS. In other words, things will not get better before they get worse.

 

Diver

MS now has Mark R & EP_Xoff working for them..

That should make a big difference shouldn't it?

bruce

 

Controller, who are these two people?

MS is a very large organization. Remember the Japanese saying, the shiny nail that stands up gets pounded down. Also, my view is there are many factors outside of what happens at MS that are driving the current situation.

 

Since Controller doesn't seem to be on, that would be Mark Russinovich and the (I guess best stated as lead - correct me if wrong) developer of RootkitUnhooker (see here)

Blue

 

I sort of had an idea on Mark R, but the other one is a mystery to me.

 

Thanks blue

I just always assume everybody knows the same people.

I might have forgot to mention Joanna Rutkowska, maker of Blue Pill

http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/

Interesting developments ey?

 

Actually, they are.

The situation with MS and EP_X0FF is particularly interesting. Regardless of his past dealings here and elsewhere, it's clear that he's an extremely creative - and probably world class - programmer and it's to MS's credit that they've landed him.

Blue

 

Yes and I dought MS will let EP express himself openly as he did in the past.

he was unique, but then we are in a way i guess.

Happy New Year

 

The co-operation between Joanna and Phoenix will definitely result in some interesting hypervisor products from Phoenix. When it comes to buying new motherboards, I will look more carefully who is the manufacture of the bios from now on, instead of just focus on lowest prices...

/C.