Yes, China and Google are dominating the news with filtered searching and email break-ins.  This is bad for cloud computing as noted in my Saturday post.  Keep your eyes on this as you talk with clients about cloud computing options.  The fact is, you can’t trust your data with someone else at this point and the big clouds are the big targets…it will always be that way.

On the tech page of USToday I found this article on do-it-yourself hacking kits.  This is pretty cool; for only seven or eight hundred dollars you can purchase the software along with instructions (probably better instructions than those provided with the software I buy), to hack into just about anything.  That means that disgruntled customers can attack providers they use for just about anything when they feel they’ve been ripped off.  The key tools are bots downloaded to systems through links passed on through email.  The topics could be anything of interest – we’re closing in on tax season, so expect this to be at the top of the list.

Experience needed?  All you need is the ability to download music or video to a computer.  In other words, hackers have commoditized the industry, making it available to just about anyone.  Helping companys with this is an opportunity, especially in the SMB market where security defense continues to be very week.  Also in the regional banks, I expect this to increase attacks on online banking, and these smaller banks are not well equipped to defeat this type of attack.  Check out the article and pass it on to your clients…

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2010-01-17-internet-scams-phishing_N.htm