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In March, Bill Brenner, Senior Editor of CSO, wrote: ‘Thanks to the blogosphere, social networking sites and podcasting made easy, many security pros are taking on a much more public persona, becoming near-rock stars.’ Well, ‘rock stars’ may be pushing it a little far but it’s certainly true that the security industry has embraced today’s digital media with gusto and has made great strides in attempting to get information across to the general populace in a palatable format.

How far the message reaches outside of the IT industry is a little less clear. I suspect that the average end-user whose life does not touch even the fringes of IT (the school teacher, shop assistant, council worker and so on) does not listen to security podcasts, follow the latest security guru tweets or read any security blogs, and the problem of how to inform the masses remains a challenging one. Nevertheless, embracing the latest trends in digital media is a laudable start.

The explosion of social media and Web 2.0 technologies is just one of the changes the anti-malware industry has witnessed in the last ten years. We have seen the phenomenal rise of spam to become a major headache for end-users and vendors alike – in 2000 spam accounted for less than 8% of all email traffic, a figure that seems almost mythical next to today’s statistics in which spam accounts for close to 90% of email traffic. Alongside the rise in spam we have seen a rise in phishing – the Anti-Phishing Working Group reported a total of 176 unique phishing attacks in January 2004; in August 2009 it received an all-time high of 40,621 unique phishing reports. Identity theft has also become a worrying trend, and the distinction between malware and spam has become increasingly blurred.

At the start of the decade malware tended to be created by coders simply seeking their five minutes of fame, but over the course of the last ten years motivations behind malware have rapidly changed – as has the volume of malware being released on a daily basis. Modern malware is commercially motivated, and malware creation is now a serious criminal enterprise worth many millions worldwide.

Of course, keeping pace with the changes in the world of cybercrime has meant changes for the AV industry. Almost without exception, vendors now offer firewalls, anti-spam, anti-spyware, anti-phishing and data encryption technologies alongside the traditional anti-malware – and traditional malware detection technologies have been joined by proactive methods using heuristic and generic techniques, as well as scanning in the cloud. Even the marketplace has seen changes over the last ten years – in 2000, VB’s largest comparative review saw a total of 19 products being tested on Windows NT, while last month saw a total of 60 products on VB’s test bench.

So why all this reflection on the last ten years? This year will mark the 20th anniversary of the VB conference and by way of celebration the organizers plan to reinstate an award last given at VB2000 in Florida. Delegates at VB2000 witnessed a ceremony that honoured the individual who had contributed the most to the AV industry in the previous ten years. Ten years on, just as the industry – and the VB conference itself – has grown, the award categories have been extended, with six gleaming awards to be won in 2010.

We are now inviting nominations for the following award categories:

Nominations can be for individuals or teams. Once we have a shortlist of nominees voting will be opened on www.virusbtn.com and the winners will be announced at VB2010 in Vancouver. Please send your nominations to [email protected].

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