**12. Conclusion**

At this point in time, the outlook for cyber security is not as rosy as the authors would prefer. Attackers continue to find new ways to exploit weaknesses, while developers continue to fix the known problems and attempt to develop new operating systems and applications with fewer vulnerabilities. Because there is very ample motivation (the chance for success is high), and because the possibility of being caught is relatively low (the risk is not terribly high), the area of cyber security continues to attract many black hats with many motivations.

In many senses, it is just like physical (aka "kinetic") warfare. As soon as one side develops a new weapon, the other side begins to develop a counter-weapon or a work-around. Additionally, the more aggressive side continues to probe the target for all possible points of weakness, and exploits these weaknesses when found. History has shown that this cycle of probing, exploiting, developing, and counter-developing can continue *ad infinitum*. Our belief is that the white hats will continue to make life in the cyber-world tolerable, minimizing risk and continuing to make improvements that provide major advantages to offset the associated problems. It will take a great deal of effort by many parties to keep cyberspace widely useful.
