Adequate cybersecurity is impossible because of its cost and reactive nature, making hacker success inevitable

In addition to the rising threat, as nation level attacks become more plausible, the vulnerabilities have also increased. One cause of this is that in addition to virtually every business being on the Internet, today most homes are also connected. This has become particularly true with the advent of relatively inexpensive DSL and cable connections. To make things worse, most home users do not know that their systems are vulnerable. They often say “I have nothing to hide,” or “I don’t care if someone else sees the information on my computer.” Most of these users do not use a firewall, and they think that because their system came with an antivirus program they are protected. They often do not realize that virus programs need to be updated regularly. A big problem is that home users are not aware that their systems can serve as a jump off point for other attacks. In fact, many of the denial of service attacks use unsuspecting home computers as zombies to be awaken at a specific time to unwittingly accomplish a distributed denial of service. Another reason that things are so bad is because, for the most part, computer security is reactive. That is, system administrators and security professionals are usually reacting to the latest attack. After they fix the vulnerability that allowed the attack, the attackers look for new vulnerabilities to exploit for new attacks. What is needed is a proactive approach. Security is also expensive, both in dollars and in time taken from normal everyday tasks. As a result, security vulnerabilities often exist not because there is not a known fix, but because some administrator does not have the time to put in a patch to fix the problem. Finally, there is not now, and never will be, a system with perfect security. That is, if functionality is a requirement, then there will always be security gaps. Security is a system attribute that must be traded off against user friendliness, efficiency, ease of use, and other desirable system properties.