By Tim McElligott

For most of my life, I have lived with the confidence I would likely not have to face an apocalypse. Not any more. These days I feel one moment as if I am channeling Ned Ludd – for whom the Luddites were named – and feel like smashing to bits the very technology that in a roundabout way feeds my family and covers my gambling debts. Other times I tremble like an apocalyptic Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems co-founder, with all the trepidation of technology run amok and less than half the brains to understand why.

Much of my apocalyptic angst is driven by cable news and AM radio, which I know I should just turn off and has nothing to do with technology. But some is legitimate. And that is fueled by the pace of advancing IP technology in the nation’s communications networks. It may not seem so fast at times, but as David McClure, president and CEO of the U.S. Internet Industry Association, said last week, “U.S. service providers are responsible for the fastest deployment of new technology in the history of mankind, taking broadband from zero to 63 percent adoption in less than a decade.”

This is a great accomplishment to be sure. Sixty-three percent, he said, happens to be the magic marketing point where technology stops being for geeks and early adopters and goes mainstream. So there’s no turning back now. The problem with being mainstream and with the speed of this transition is that network vulnerability becomes greater and the damages from a major outage more profound when ignorant users (no offense to Aunt Gert) or bitter employees (we all know some) use access portals configured by harried technicians deploying untested gear running on a protocol that’s not securable.

Despite the hundreds of millions that have been invested in security-based technologies for networks and PCs, there are successful attacks on IP networks everyday. Add in Mobile IP and the anxiety goes through the roof.

That’s why I am glad the VON Conference & Expo has not one, but two sessions on security. Too often, conferences focus on the eye-popping business opportunities ahead and leave the downer stuff for the lab rats to figure out.

The first session, “The Danger Zone: Dealing With the Top IP Network Security Threats”|http://www.von.com/expo/2009/education/big-shift.html], is on Monday at 12:30 and is being led by security expert Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst at IT Harvest. It also features experts from Tekelec, Sipera Systems and Xconnect. It looks at technologies that provide proactive security solutions – as all worthwhile security solutions are.

The second session is called “Stormy Weather: Securing Cloud Communications”. It’s on Wednesday at noon. Sometimes I wonder about the efficacy of deploying new technologies that require the rise of a whole new wave of security startups. Shouldn’t that be a big red flag by itself? Nonetheless, cloud computing is too hot a topic and has too much momentum to be slowed by anything as secondary as security. But hearing from folks who are trying to at least keep pace from a security standpoint has to be a good thing. This session features experts from Thinking Phone Networks as well as Evolve IP, Alteva, IBM and Alcatel Lucent.

I’ll sleep better knowing Richard Martin & Co. at VON are taking security seriously. It’s much more comforting that the thought of purple minutes.