Security: from nuisance to all-out assault

In 1988, Robert Morris' worm crippled 6,000 machines on the Internet. Today's Web-tethered companies have built defenses that would have stopped the primitive Morris worm in its tracks.

However, the relentless attacks on IT's security barriers are no longer spearheaded by troublemakers like Morris or famed hacker Kevin Mitnick. Incursions now come from organized criminals using sophisticated tools to steal information for blackmail, corporate espionage or identity-theft schemes. Last year, the FBI reported that 95 percent of companies it surveyed had seen their network perimeters battered by online criminals.

Privacy concerns have spawned numerous IT-related regulations, moving information security from a separate practice to a central but seemingly unsolvable part of information management.

The rise of client/server computing