Death of security industry predicted...

[mdlbear]

... encrypted PDFs at 11.

Bruce Schneier's Security Matters: Prediction -- RSA Conference Will Shrink Like a Punctured Balloon

For a while now I have predicted the death of the security industry. Not the death of information security as a vital requirement, of course, but the death of the end-user security industry that gathers at the RSA Conference. When something becomes infrastructure -- power, water, cleaning service, tax preparation -- customers care less about details and more about results. Technological innovations become something the infrastructure providers pay attention to, and they package it for their customers.

No one wants to buy security. They want to buy something truly useful -- database management systems, Web 2.0 collaboration tools, a company-wide network -- and they want it to be secure. They don't want to have to become IT security experts. They don't want to have to go to the RSA Conference. This is the future of IT security.

You can see it in the large IT outsourcing contracts that companies are signing -- not security outsourcing contracts, but more general IT contracts that include security. You can see it in the current wave of industry consolidation: not large security companies buying small security companies, but non-security companies buying security companies. And you can see it in the new popularity of software as a service: Customers want solutions; who cares about the details?

... unless they're Microsoft customers, of course. (from techdirt)

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Well, that and folks are more and more buying (or simply downloading) OS's with security designed in. Ubuntu. OS X. Or taking security back in-house where it belongs (we do both). The ones that outsource their IT to the monster consulting firms that are still using 20th century OS's are gonna get reamed... until they clue. I think one of them is about to.

[mdlbear]

Yup.

Though the main point of the article is that it needs to be built into the OS and applications, so the average user doesn't have to do anything to make it secure.