Why Is Security Technology Not Working?
Cyber Protection Magazine, Monday, January 1st, 2024
Last year, Tanium Inc. ran a series of full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal with headlines such as 'We Are Spending $160B This Year on Security Solutions That Are Failing To Protect Us' and 'Why Is Cybersecurity Getting Worse?'
We'll answer Tanium's question shortly, but first let's update that spending to nearly $200 billion this year. Yes, spending on that which doesn't work is increasing rapidly. That's because security is what I call a WTI. Here's how I define a WTI in my additions to Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary:
WTI: (Acronym for Wrinkle Treatment Industry) An industry that thrives only as long as its products don't work.
A dysfunctional part
Now, the failing security industry is not as nefarious as that may make seem. Its participants were set on their dysfunctional path years ago and, well. you know, inertia. I think I have a good perspective on the origin of the problem. And here I must admit to some culpability. In 1967 the Air Force sent me to school to learn how to program the Burroughs B263 computer in its assembly language.