“Forty-four hours. That’s how long it took for network
security to go from being considered a geek subject to a national
issue on a par with such monumental policy debates as healthcare
and Social Security reform.”
“Those 44 hours transpired between 10:30 a.m. PST, Feb. 7, and
6:30 a.m. PST, Feb. 9 — during which time a series of massive
distributed denial-of-service attacks either hobbled or knocked
offline eight of the Web’s most popular sites. … At the end of
those 44 hours, everything had changed.”
“This reaction isn’t surprising when you consider that the
Internet is now widely acknowledged as the Big Bertha that’s
lifting the U.S. economy into the stratosphere. Dotcoms are all the
rage, dominating Wall Street, the news and commercials. E-commerce
— a mere blip on Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan’s
radar screen just two years ago — now accounts for some $20
billion in the retail market. By 2004, consumer sales are expected
to equal a $185 billion hunk of the national economy and
business-to-business transactions will hit a whopping $2.7
trillion, according to market watcher Forrester Research Inc.”