When Anonymous took on the forces opposing Wikileaks, it had a sort of “Robin Hood-esque”, fighting for the underdog feel to it.

When Epsilon, and RSA Security were breached it was easy to write the attacks off as random, standalone occurrences.

When Sony got attacked–repeatedly–it was again easy to dismiss it as hacktivism.

Things have gotten out of hand. Between LulzSec and Anonymous, sites are being breached on a virtually daily basis. These hacking collectives seem to operate with relative impunity and make breaking into networks and servers look like stealing candy from a baby.

While it easy to condemn the actions of these groups, the ease with which they are hacking networks begs the question of whether or not there is more that organizations can or should be doing to secure their networks and lock down their data. There is no such thing as an impenetrable network. Given enough time, skill, and resources, attackers can find a way into any network. But, these attacks don’t seem to be taking the kind of time, skill, or resources that should be required for networks and data that are properly protected.

I do not condone the actions of the hacking collectives, but I do think they deserve some credit for poignantly demonstrating on a daily basis just how frail most network defenses and data security measures are.