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In May of 2006, I called my friend and former colleague Tim Wilson to get his advice on a job offer I had received. At the time, I was running my own editorial business, and while I was itching for a change, for many reasons I wasn't excited about the position at the magazine that wanted to hire me.
That (landline) phone call with Tim changed everything. Before I could mention my misgivings about the job offer in question, Tim excitedly shared that he and Terry Sweeney (another friend and former colleague) had just discussed recruiting me to join them at their new start-up cybersecurity media site, Dark Reading.
You can probably guess what happened next.
From the beginning, 20 years ago, our goal at Dark Reading was to serve industry professionals with expert reporting and great writing, with deep, unique insights and analysis that couldn't be found anywhere else. That meant earning our role as a trusted chronicler of an organic industry in its infancy that was poised to become one of the most critical tech sectors. The Internet had exploded from its roots as an R&D project for the US Defense Department and academic researchers into a commercial network backbone for electronic commerce, and a burgeoning business operations platform. Securing the world's interconnected networks (and the data traveling across them) had become a major priority.
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The tiny Dark Reading team quickly found its footing in the cybersecurity industry — at the time known as IT security or information security. We were breaking news, writing scoops, cultivating sources, and putting the puzzle pieces together in a burgeoning industry that also operated like a close-knit community of ethical hackers, engineers, experts, and startups. It wasn't just about the technology: we got to know and highlight the people behind it.
One of my first big projects at Dark Reading was to interview and profile the industry's pioneers, many of them in their 20s and some of whom had colorful (and sometimes dubious) histories. The roster included Metasploit inventor HD Moore, who more than a decade ago created among the first Internet-scanners exposing vulnerable systems and devices; Joanna Rutkowska, who cracked the kernel of the then-"secure" Microsoft Vista operating system; Marc Maiffret, who at the age of 17 woke up to a bizarre FBI raid and confiscation of his computer equipment somehow related to his teen hacking (he was never charged with anything); and the late, great Dan Kaminsky, whose 80-year-old grandma, armed with homemade cookies, would attend his annual Black Hat presentation in Las Vegas on the latest major vulnerability.
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Some of the headlines from the early days read quaint today compared with the harshness of data wipers, ransomware/extortion, and malicious AI agents. There was, for example, the first known insider-threat incident, when a chemist at DuPont stole $400 million in trade secrets in downloaded documents from his then-employer; and in 2008, a cybercriminal became major news after being arrested for a massive hacking spree that stole payment data from TJX and other major corporations.
Looking Back on 2 Decades of Cybersecurity History
To truly understand where we are today in the now $200 billion+ cybersecurity industry, it helps to know its history (cue Carl Sagan: "You have to know the past to understand the present").
In celebration of our anniversary, Dark Reading's team of talented and experienced reporters and editors has created a package of special multimedia content that highlights and analyzes the key news events, trends, newsmakers — and even failures — of the past two decades. Starting today with this column, a special video retrospective (you can watch the video at the top of this page), and a cartoon-caption contest, Dark Reading will publish a series of special pieces of anniversary content throughout the month of May, including articles, videos, a memorable podcast, visuals, and even a cyber-trivia contest you can participate in via our social media channels.
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As always, we want to hear from you. So please use [email protected] or our social media platforms to share your feedback, reminiscences, or ideas as we celebrate this milestone with in-depth look at cybersecurity history.
In the meantime, I will leave you with this excerpt from the late Tim Wilson's column heralding Dark Reading's 10th anniversary in 2016, which coincidentally still resonates:
For most security professionals, today's issues have to do with the future: the next attack, the next vulnerability, the next compromise of critical data. That’s as it should be. But, periodically, it makes sense to look back at where we've been — where we failed, what we've accomplished, and what we've learned. Looking back sometimes helps us understand where we're going. —Tim Wilson, Co-Founder and then-Editor-in-Chief, Dark Reading
Here's to 20 more years of cybersecurity media excellence. Happy (Dark) Reading!
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