Dark Reading's Seven-Year Itch

Seven years ago today, Dark Reading made its first appearance on the Web. The publication, like the security industry itself, has changed a great deal since May 1, 2006 -- and yet, as with the industry, many core themes remain constant.

When we launched Dark Reading, our goal was to build a single website where security professionals could go to find all of the information they needed about new threats and methods for stopping them.

In those days, nobody was talking about the cloud or advanced persistent threats or bring your own device. One of the biggest breaches that year was at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where an employee brought work home on a laptop that was subsequently stolen. One of our most popular stories was a penetration test by blogger Steve Stasiukonis, who put a benign infection on a bunch of thumb drives and placed them all over a company headquarters site (almost all of them were plugged into company computers).

Over the years, businesses have been inundated with new attacks ranging from Stuxnet to Storm, from Anonymous to Zeus. And yet, those lost laptops and infected thumb drives continue to be a problem for most enterprises.

In 2006, we were writing about the features of antivirus and IPS products, noting their particular flaws and inability to prevent attacks from penetrating. The integrity of the security perimeter was at risk.

Since then, we've seen the launch of a wide range of technologies and strategies, from next-generation firewalls to data leak prevention to threat intelligence services. And yet, experts are still complaining about the failure of AV technology, and most have all but given up the idea of maintaining a secure perimeter.

Perhaps the lesson we're taught from the past seven years is that while attacks and technology change, the nature of security itself doesn't. We may be dealing with an unprecedented volume and sophistication of malware, but that doesn't change the fact that humans are at the heart of most of our defenses -- and most of our compromises. And security, like everything else that's human, is a work in progress.

For Dark Reading's part, our pledge is to continue to strive to be that single source of news and information that you need in your efforts as a security professional. We've taken some steps recently to improve our content, such as the redesign launched in April, and we have more plans in store for improving the usefulness and interactivity of the site. We have an itch to take this site to a new level, and we look forward to the days ahead.

And for those of you who have been reading us over these past seven years, thank you. We hope we'll continue to be one of your primary sites for security news and information for another seven years -- and beyond.

--Tim Wilson, Kelly Jackson Higgins, and the staff and contributors of Dark Reading