Cатсн²² (in)sесuяitу / ChrisJohnRiley

It’s only a month before 2011 is officially over and 2012 kicks-off… so what better way to waste my time and yours than to write a stupid list of things that will probably never happen in 2012… or to go back and say why all the things I wrote last year didn’t happen! Yes, that’s right boys and girls it’s the silly season, where smart people the world over start telling you what they think might possibly happen next year. From wild predictions about the rise of Linux on the desktop, to the coming of the IT apocalypse, and everything in-between.

So, just to not get left out in the cold on this one I’ve spent a good 20 to 30 second thinking up some points that are worth listing. Just to keep on point I’ve restricted myself to the top 3… don’t want to overload you with amazingness this late in the year after all 😉

Shit will happen

There’s nothing you can do to stop this… shit happens all the time. Chances are, shit will happen to you, your friends and your next door neighbours cat. You should learn to live with this, for your own good!

People will panic

OMGWTFBBQ another exploit in Adobe PDF reader… it’s the end of the world as we know it!!!!11111oneoneone

No, it’s not. Just relax, think for a second, and then uninstall that shit! (see point 1)

Life will go on

We’ve lived through MS08-067 (some of you still are apparently), we’ve lived through the ” I L ove You” virus (and the movie it spawned), and we’ve lived through over a year of people thinking Rick Rolling is still an art form (it’s over… no, really!)

People get all stressed up about this shit (see point 1, and point 2). Relax, take a breath. Just remember, it could be worse! You could be at a Justin Bieber concert!

So, what does this mean for us in 2012… other than the phrase “same shit different day” obviously. Well if I were you, and I’m not, I’d take 2012 as the year you go back to basics. Your shiny new WAF/IPS/Firewall Mega box with flashy blue and orange lights is going to do less to protect your enterprise than changing default passwords and making sure your phpMyAdmin is patched and restricted to your management LAN IP range!

It’s not sexy… it’s not even fun… but it’s where we’ve been going wrong for the last X years. You build a tower of security on sand, it’s going to crumble… and you’re going to get sand in your crack! So build a solid foundation!

Have a good 2012, let's try and make it better than 2011 shall we!