Information is power

Coming back through Heathrow last night customs was utterly empty.

Now, on a flight in from Amsterdam, home of semi-legal drugs, you'd have thought they'd have been checking things. But as a Customs officer explained, no-one with an ounce of sense would try and smuggle drugs from such a notorious location.

In any case most airports have a few 'foxes' – undercover customs staff – who keep an eye out for suspicious characters.

This applies to IT security as well. Attacks via poorly patched browsers are a case in point. Why struggle though the firewall when you can nip into a system via an unpatched user instead?