In the early days, many network protocols and information systems were developed without any thought given to security. The original email protocol stored and transmitted every message in plaintext. Devices were shipped with default credentials like admin/admin, some of them with no actual process for changing those credentials and no way to update the firmware, leaving them permanently vulnerable.
Later, people started realizing that some way to prevent unwanted access was necessary, but many of the new security features were just bolted on to existing products without much testing, and frequently there were ways to simply bypass the security without having to actually break it.
In the present most serious products have at least some thought given to security implementations during development. There are entire companies that specialize in security products, software, hardware and middleware. There are professionals whose entire careers have been spent thinking about these problems, and government agencies and laws focused on them. There is more investment and more scrutiny on information security that there ever has been at any point in human history.
At the same time, the amount of things plugged into the global information network has exploded. There is orders of magnitude more information storage connected now than there was in the 90s, and higher consequences for unauthorized access (things like public water and electricity systems are connected now).
In the 60s the number of people who had a grasp of computer networking could be counted on your fingers, for the entire planet. In the 80s, that community was still small enough that everybody knew each other. In the present the community and the networks are so large and complex that no one has any idea what is going on. There is a lot of confusion that didn’t exist in the past, and that creates gaps in systems because products get connected to each other in ways that they were never designed for, so even if two things have their own well-implemented security features, the point where they share information with each other often doesn’t.
In short, security is a lot tighter now than it used to be. People are paying attention, taking it seriously. On the other hand, there is a lot more opportunity for security vulnerabilities to be found in systems, and everything is too complicated for anybody to really understand all of it.
It is both harder and easier.
In the early days, many network protocols and information systems were developed without any thought given to security. The original email protocol stored and transmitted every message in plaintext. Devices were shipped with default credentials like admin/admin, some of them with no actual process for changing those credentials and no way to update the firmware, leaving them permanently vulnerable.
Later, people started realizing that some way to prevent unwanted access was necessary, but many of the new security features were just bolted on to existing products without much testing, and frequently there were ways to simply bypass the security without having to actually break it.
In the present most serious products have at least some thought given to security implementations during development. There are entire companies that specialize in security products, software, hardware and middleware. There are professionals whose entire careers have been spent thinking about these problems, and government agencies and laws focused on them. There is more investment and more scrutiny on information security that there ever has been at any point in human history.
At the same time, the amount of things plugged into the global information network has exploded. There is orders of magnitude more information storage connected now than there was in the 90s, and higher consequences for unauthorized access (things like public water and electricity systems are connected now).
In the 60s the number of people who had a grasp of computer networking could be counted on your fingers, for the entire planet. In the 80s, that community was still small enough that everybody knew each other. In the present the community and the networks are so large and complex that no one has any idea what is going on. There is a lot of confusion that didn’t exist in the past, and that creates gaps in systems because products get connected to each other in ways that they were never designed for, so even if two things have their own well-implemented security features, the point where they share information with each other often doesn’t.
In short, security is a lot tighter now than it used to be. People are paying attention, taking it seriously. On the other hand, there is a lot more opportunity for security vulnerabilities to be found in systems, and everything is too complicated for anybody to really understand all of it.