Dan Nadir

When does seemingly harmless recreational surfing turn into something a lot more dangerous?

The web is a big place — and thanks to the dynamic nature of Web 2.0 applications and user-contributed content it grows bigger by the minute. According to Netcrafts latest survey, there are over 127 million active websites.

Time Magazine recently bestowed its prestigious Person of the Year honor on You, recognizing the growing social importance of community and collaboration on the web. YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, Bebo and hundreds of other websites that rely on user-contributed content and which are broadly referred to as Web 2.0 have officially become mainstream.

The volume of internet traffic generated by an ever-increasing number of applications, including e-mail, Instant Messaging (IM), web services, Voice over IP (VoIP), and other network transactions is growing unabated. Together with these applications has come an associated proliferation in the number of user identities within enterprises – e-mail addresses, IM handles, VoIP telephone numbers, all of which need to be managed. Concurrently, companies are under increasing scrutiny to adhere to government regulations and other compliance requirements to protect the privacy of customers, employees, and their personal data.