by: Chris Knotts, PMP – ASPE Creative Director

For me, the big story this week was in security. With so much else going on, it took a couple days for this story to punch through to the mainstream, but the internet hummed with it ever since Wednesday morning when the news broke. I’m talking about the federal (and worldwide) raids on prominent hackers associated with the loosely-defined Anonymous “hacktivist” movement. With Super Tuesday and the iPad 3 in the mix, all other technology stories were already starting at third place, so I thought it important to keep my eye on this one. After all, we’ve known the iPad was coming for awhile now – though cool, it’s more of a continuation of the iPad story, not a new one. Super Tuesday… I’ll leave that to the pundits.

Let’s look at this security-related story. We’re talking about these hackers that were arrested across the world in Ireland, Britain, New York, and Chicago. These guys were members of the group Lulz Security, (#lulzsec) an offshoot of global hacker collective Anonymous. (For more on Anonymous, including great background, check out this history from InfoSec.) These guys have hacked their way up and down the internet for the past couple years.  I think most of us have heard the official headline that 2011 was the worst year for internet security ever, and looking at the statistics I think few would argue (for more on hacking in 2011, check out this infographic). Click to continue »