Evalubase Research Inc. released a survey in February that covered five technology areas: data management, hardware and operating systems, communications and networking, application development, and industry applications. The research firm asked IT professionals to rank those technologies for performance, usability, functionality, compatibility, maintainability and security. You won't be shocked to learn that security ranked at the bottom for all except hardware and operating systems, and communications and networking, where it was ranked next to last.

Nick Caffarra, president of Evalubase, tells me that maybe, maybe, in five or more years there could be an integrated cross-technology security approach from one vendor capable of protecting your information. But he doesn't sound optimistic.

Little wonder that he isn't bullish on a single security approach, because here's the worse news. It comes from Seth Hallem, CEO of Coverity Inc. His company scans source code for defects, most of which lead to security holes. (The Department of Homeland Security and Stanford University chose Coverity to analyze open-source tools for defects.) Hallem points to research that proves it's mathematically impossible to eliminate defects from source code. Mathematically impossible.

So, that's the news. Your company's information isn't secure today, and it won't ever be.

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