The only way IT organizations are ever going to get their collective security acts together is when they finally come to understand the scope of the threat they are really up against.

In a Profile the World’s Top Hackers webinar sponsored by Lumension, three well-known security experts come together to explain why things are likely to get a lot worse in the very near future.

Well-known hacker Mafiaboy, who in real life goes by the name Michael Calce, says that when it comes to security, the Internet is still broken. Worse yet, attacks today are designed to not ever be discovered and hackers are getting much better at manipulating end users into become their unwitting accomplices.

Mafiaboy adds that advent of Web 2.0 applications and cloud computing is only going to make things much worse because these technologies make it easier to target information that is now more centrally located and interconnected with any number of services on the Web. He adds that denial of service (DoS) attacks are increasing as well because as the number of services on the Web increase, the amount of bandwidth available for DoS attacks increases as well.

Byron Acchido, author of the book Zero Day Threat, walks attendees through some of the favorite methods hackers use to exploit security vulnerabilities after explaining the basic economics that drive the cybercrime economy.

Finally, Paul Henry, a security and forensics analyst for Lumension, opens the event by pointing out that we are most often are own worst enemy when it comes to security. Half of all users are not using the latest, most secure version of their browser software. At the same time, the cost of remediating security issues is skyrocketing; while the number of targeted attacks increase as profit margins for generic data continues to fall dramatically.

Henry concludes that the best thing IT organizations could do today is to stop throwing money at the security problem and focus more on fundamental security processes.

Rating: Might be the best security webinar ever.