A week later, the indignation and media furor that has erupted over search giant Google's revelation that it was the victim of a sophisticated cyber attack is still simmering. If anything, the knowledge that the vector used in this particular hacking incident involved the exploitation of a zero day flaw in Microsoft's popular Internet Explorer browser hung, poised like an executioner's axe in the minds of CIOs and security managers. The fact that proof-of-concept exploit code has started circulating on the Internet only served to make the situation even more critical.

Thankfully, it has emerged that Microsoft already had a patch for this particular vulnerability ready, which the company proceeded to release as an out-of-order emergency patch yesterday. The MS10-002 update addresses a total of eight vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, and should be installed--via Windows Update or manually--as soon as possible.

Company officials and security experts point out that the enhanced security in Windows Vista and newer versions means that only Internet Explorer 6 was actually vulnerable to the circulated proof-of-concept. And hasn't Microsoft pleaded and even paid for campaigns to get users to stop using Internet Explorer 6? Yet some kind of backlash against Microsoft's Internet Explorer family of browsers appears to be inevitable. Already, downloads of competing browsers from Opera and Firefox were reported to have soared.

The current situation is proving to be fortuitous for Mozilla, which has just announced the availability of Firefox 3.6--a pure coincidence? With a boldness indicative of its fast growing user base, Mozilla is touting Firefox at its download site as "The best browser in the world," an assertion that Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox defends as true.

Among a plethora of features, Firefox 3.6 is also said to run that much faster and snappier than its predecessor. I've recently made the transition to Google Chrome myself, but I did use Firefox as my browser of choice for a number of years before that. Well, I believe Firefox users will like the improvements in Firefox 3.6.

To bring home my point that security remains a bugbear this year, a new study found a shocking number of portable flash drives are misplaced--in the pockets of clothes sent to the dry cleaners, no less. This gives one a sense of the alarming culture of pervasive insecurity in commercial entities today.

Will the security landscape improve before the end of the year? My take is that its unlikely; what do you think? - Paul Mah