Last month I wrote a piece about Internet security, and you’ll find it here. Since then, other events have occurred that cause me to revisit those thoughts and help explain some of the new basic concepts about email use.

Five months ago, an eastern European country’s Internet was shut down for a day, the victim of a spam attack. Not just a web site, and not just one ISP. An entire country.

Last month, a test was conducted in the United States involving a power grid. A simulated attack was conducted on a US power grid, resulting in a simulated power grid failure. It did not receive much media coverage, but it should have. I hope those in this country who should have seen this saw it.

Internet service providers like Comcast, Verizon, AOL and others may very well not be able to withstand a concentrated attack, whether denial of service or denial of computing. As I noted in my earlier piece on the subject, it might be only giants like Yahoo and Bank of America that could. When an ISP goes down, so does every one of its customers, and we’re talking tens of millions of computer users in the US alone.

If you read the news carefully and thoroughly enough, you’ll find lots of hard news stories about incidents like this occurring all the time. My guess is it’s sort of like the existence of UFOs and alien presence on earth – - if they were real, those in positions of authority would not tell us for fear of the affect on the masses. Now, I don’t wear a tin foil hat or anything, but we should be aware that a cyber attack of some kind is likely at some point in the future. Not time for EVERYONE TO PANIC, but everyone who lives and works in the virtual world needs to be aware.

A generation in technology is about 18 months, according to generally accepted standards. Just a couple of years ago, spam volume was in the hundreds of millions of pieces per day. Today, that figure is estimated to be 2 billion. That’s 2 billion. Per day. ISPs have to cope with this volume of email trying to get to you. Since they might not be able to hold off a dedicated attack, they have had to hunker down, block anything that offers the merest suggestion of spam. Because this happens “behind the curtain,” if you will, nobody feels it or sees it. That is, until they try to send an email that another ISP red flags.

What’s this mean for the average Internet business person? It means you have to become more aware of the environment in which you work, to be honest. Email was intended originally as a easy, free and anonymous way to pass simple messages back and forth. It still is a good vehicle for that purpose. It was never intended to serve as vehicle for mammoth file size transfers, for instance . . . that’s what FTP is intended to do. And, since viruses, worms and Trojans are easily hidden in HTML code, ISPs are getting pretty tight about any emails filled with raw HTML in the main body. These are two of the more obvious red flag items ISPs are reacting to, and business email habits need to adjust accordingly. If you get an email bounced back to you for seemingly no apparent reason, it may be because you are trying to use email in a way for which it was not intended, or in a way ISPs will no longer permit.

Things change. Three IT generations ago, spam was several hundred million pieces per day, as I said – - – today, 2 billion. If a human generation is 18 years, then 3 generations is 56 years. No matter what industry you are in, no matter what you do for work, are things being done in your industry the same way they were done 56 years ago? Things change. Just as you have kept pace with changes in your own industry or work arena, you have to do the same if you work in the virtual world.

Things change, and you have to change with them. Security does need to tighten up, as recent events show. You don’t need to be afraid yet, but you should be aware.