As worms like Conficker steal headlines and get picked up by mainstream media, do you see organizations getting smarter and protecting their networks?

What we see first of all is that the cyber criminals are getting better at protecting their botnets. That's a logical development which is providing new challenges for the security community. However I'm not that sure that legitimate businesses are learning at the same pace. A lot of the Conficker epidemic could have been prevented if ISPs had taken better care to protect the consumer networks.

Also the current economic situation is not helping, with businesses trying to cut costs. However in that regard I think that most businesses will have reconsidered any security budget cut after getting hit by Conficker. Overall it may have improved things a bit in the bigger companies, but not so much in the smaller. I think it's regular business. Businesses getting hit with malware will try to improve, businesses not hit will think they are doing alright. For businesses it doesn't matter if a threat is called Conficker or Agent, they simply don't want to get infected.


Where do you see the current security threats your products are guarding against in 5 years from now? What kind of evolution do you expect?

That is actually extremely hard to predict. To make an accurate statement about it you need to factor in a lot of different things. Where will the internet be by then? Will there be involvement and responsiveness from law enforcement and if so, how much? And so on.

In any case the threats will go where the money is. In five years mobile banking will be very standard and therefore we will see a lot of malware for mobile devices. If Apple's market share continues to grow the same will apply to Apple operating system. Online games will still be big so there will still be a lot of malware targeting those games and gamers. Overall a lot will depend on how well law enforcement will be able to track down cyber criminals all across the world.