On the Web, the Police Are Likely to Be Private

When a spate of e-vandalism disrupted several major Internet sites late last week, all eyes were on the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), which was created last year to guard against such attacks. And over the weekend the NIPC announced that it already had a lead — a 20-year-old German college student/cyberpunk called Mixter was believed to be behind one of the three "smurf" attacks that caused the disruptions. Yet it wasn't so much the work of NIPC that led law-enforcement to Mixter as the efforts of a band of private cyber-detectives. The California-based Network Associates, hired by the disrupted sites, was the entity able to secure the cooperation of tech firms across the world to trace part of the attack to a PC in Germany.

The announcement revealed two emerging trends: 1) The growth of the Web has made it easier than ever for individuals to disrupt the commerce of major corporations; and 2) The U.S. government trails private industry in policing the ever-expanding portion of the economy trapped in the World Wide Web. "The FBI's doing what it can," notes TIME Digital online editor Nathaniel Wice. "But the truth of the matter is that the people who are most advanced at tracking these things are those running the Web sites and the private firms that specialize in this type of criminal activity."

It's a growth industry — and for very good reason. Burgeoning Web companies face the prospect of a 20-year-old being able, across international boundaries, to halt the entire business of a multibillion-dollar corporation. Private industry isn't about to wait for law enforcement agencies — and the problems of international cooperation — to catch up to this wily young crop of mischief-seekers. In fact, firms may be more willing to cooperate with their fellow e-businesses than with big government agencies, particularly those from other countries, for fear of compromising web secrets. So if you're looking for a hot stock in the Internet world, you might want to consider one of these cyber-security firms. After all, if there's one thing scarier than the notion of a bored kid holding America's economy hostage with a new smurfing program, it's the prices these types of firms will be able to charge for their services.