I think I must be in tune with the Zeitgeist as yesterday I covered bot herders in my botnet post and tomorrow’s Economist (well, the print version says June 23rd) covers bot-herders (they use a hyphen) in their article entitled Cyber-crime: a good bot roast . The Bot Roast refers to the name of an FBI operation against the creators of botnets, which far from being merely a geeky sort of prank are now seen as a danger to national security.
To continue my Cybertheme (my new word unless anyone else got there first) this post is entitled Cyber-hygiene, which the Economist says is “a public good”. The bot-herders that were targeted by the FBI were American as were most of the victims. But, the Economist tells us, the American administration’s Cyber-sheriffs “want an international posse” ASAP.
You might think that Cyber-hygiene would be a new word, so beautifully fitting a theme of the month. However, typing it into Google brings up over five hundred replies. I wonder how many it will bring up this time next year. I would hazard a guess at five hundred thousand. It is even in the answers.com dictionary, and is defined as:
“Electronic sanitation. Refers to securing a company’s systems and networks against attack.”
ETYM
Cyber – Another example of a raging prefix that we may all soon tire of.
Hygiene – It has been common to talk about cleaning up a computer after a virus attack. Good hygiene is important when dealing with biological infections, including viruses, and I think that the terminology has come from this source. There is even a page devoted to “Digital Hygiene” on the net, but it is on a site named after a nasty spider, so I won’t publicise it any more. Suffice to say that anyone who knows how to use Google can find it themselves.
