Ominous 2009 outlook for Internet security

Here's an ominous assessment of the state of the open Internet and the future of cloud computing -- "The web is under attack, as are corporations and consumers" per Mary Landesman a senior security researcher for Scansafe -- in an excellent ZDNet post I recommend: "Security lessons not learned will haunt us in 2009."

Landesman's Internet prognosis is sober and realistic:

• "There was more web-distributed malware in July 2008 than in the whole of 2007."
• "...2009 may prove a pivotal year for the future health and viability of the web."
• "The power of distributed computing has brought malware to the masses via botnets. While systems administrators cling to desktop-security solutions, the attackers have clearly moved to the cloud."
• "In terms of malware, 2008 was a very bad year. But 2009 will be far worse."

Bottom line: If this Internet security assessment is even remotely on mark, (and I think it is dead on), too many people are worried about the potential health of the bark on some trees and missing the fact that the Internet forest is on fire. 

In other words, the debate over net neutrality/open Internet, has many missing the security of the Internet forest for the net neutrality trees.