Debriefing

Security Awareness, According to Google Trends

A wildly unscientific and faintly humorous look at what Google tells us about web searchers' relative (dis)interest in security topics

By Derek Slater

October 19, 2009 — CSO —

Google has a nifty tool called Google Trends. It allows you to plug in two or three phrases and see which one is used more often in web searches.

Thought I'd check in on current topics and see the degree to which security is fitting into the discussion online.

Look! Everybody's talking about cloud computing!

Cloud security? Not so much.

(Think maybe I'm not using the right security terminology? I also plugged in the phrase 'cloud computing security', which yielded this message from Google: "Does not have enough search volume to rank.")

Social networking versus social engineering displays a yawning gap as well.

Well, this is a little bit depressing. Wonder if there are any areas where security is gaining ground?

No luck here either.

Despite last week's big Patch Tuesday kerfuffle, patch management is still getting crushed by a Robin Williams movie from 1998.

Maybe we need to get a little more creative in our comparisons.

Aha! Just eyeballing it, but we're maybe 12 to 18 months from overtaking the fading pop icon Paris Hilton.

Not sure whether that's much basis for celebration.

Then again, I always remember the tagline of the Farley/Spade film Tommy Boy "If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."

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