Hackers find security holes faster than they can be plugged

As hackers continue their rampage against the world's largest banks, Defense contractors and research companies, executives and government officials are confronting a sobering truth: The bad guys are winning.

The increase in high-profile attacks comes as companies are looking to move more of their business operations online, including to the "cloud," in which computing tasks are outsourced to firms that maintain huge data centers around the world.

"There are a lot of good innovation companies doing the cloud so then," he said, however having his company's data stored remotely, alongside data from many other firms, "is a little scary."

Eugene Schultz, chief research officer at Emagined Security, said that hackers are spending substantial time and effort looking for ways to penetrate the cloud.

When hackers broke into Sony's PlayStation network in April to steal information from about 77 million user accounts, the company came pursuant to this agreement fire from federal lawmakers for waiting days to inform clients that their personal data had been compromised.

"Now people are like, 'If we don't get it out now, someone's going to do a congressional inquiry and we'll be called up and asked about it,' " said Jeff Carter, a security technologist formerly at Bank of America and now at Hoyos Group, which makes iris scanning security innovation.

The same way that YouTube

In much the same way that YouTube and cell phones have enabled millions to become filmmakers, and free blogging software has created legions of diarists, low-cost hacking tools have automated the hacking process for novices.

In Internet lingo, the word "lulz" means laughs had at the expense of others -- and is the group's self-proclaimed raison d'etre.