This week, we saw another edition of Safer Internet Day. Countries worldwide marked the day with campaigns and events which were aimed at bringing the issue of protecting users, especially children, from the negative side of the internet.
There was good news when it came to UK parents protecting their kids online, with a survey saying that the British were some of the most internet savvy and conscientious in Europe.
And industry is getting involved, too. Kaspersky threw its weight behind Safer Internet Day, while security certification organisation ISC2 offers a volunteer training program that security professionals can sign up to if they want to communicate with schoolchildren.
The internet industry in the UK in the main self-regulates itself, and thanks to the efforts of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), illegal content such as obscene images of children is a rarity on websites in the UK.
The IWF has been criticised because of an isolated incident where it blocked what it thought was an indecent picture of a child of Wikipedia, and blacklisted it. The IWF suffered a lot of criticism for this, but (in its own words) it was one mistake in around ten years of good work.
It was rather ironic that security vendors Kaspersky, BitDefender and F-Secure all admitted hackers (thought to be Romanian) managed to use SQL injection attacks and cross site scripting to access their websites.
It again shows up the dangers of web-based malware, which was a big issue during 2008 and the beginning of this year.
But it could be said that these hackers were doing a good thing by flagging up poor security, because it will hopefully mean that the website defences will be firmed up so real criminals won't find a way in.
And finally, Valentine's Day is tomorrow, which means the cybercriminals have decided to flood inboxes with love-related spam which the security companies have been nice enough to flag up for us.
With spam and malware in mind - the internet greeting companies will hate me for saying this but isn't a nice handwritten card, perhaps with a hint of rose blossom scent, the best way to go?
