This week's issue of the Economist (a newspaper that I hold in high regard for its ability of both analysis and opinionating comments) features a cover story about what it calls 'the war in the fifth domain': Cyberspace.

For some reason, even the most prestigious newspapers make amusing slip ups when it comes to technology. While the Economist article has some passages that will make you chuckle ("Computer bugs bring down military e-mail systems". With 'bugs', they probably mean malware I guess), it is an interesting read. I am not going to nitpick on those small slips.

It has some interesting facts about data loss at Verizon for example (285 million records lost in 2008). Most strikingly, the article shows us a gloomy picture, in which whole armies will be put to a hold, infrastructure will explode and everyone is part of a botnet.

The truth is somewhat less frightening. Sure, lots of spam and lots of botnets and malware, but most of it is either being ignored by users or not as effective in scope as is painted. While the article does quote Bruce Schneier, the balance of frightening vs. reassuring elements is firmly tilted to the first. Sure, there is a security problem, but that does not mean that everything will go black and data on everyone is freely available. In the end, there is no 'one button' that makes the internet go down and all data centers (including the 13 domain name clusters) go 'poof'.

What worries me is that this is the way high ranking people think about information technology: a single entity that can either be great, or become a big gun for bad guys. The way the Economist describes it, however based on facts or eloquent phrasing, confirms that.

The thing is that no two data centers are alike, even if they heed to all common standards in equipment and design. The infrastructure is too complex for that.

It is a problem that this image of 'one IT to rule them all' is so hard to dispell, even among some of the experts. A local security problem is still a local problem, even if it is, say, a large bank. It is not the nuclear option.