ZD Net interviews Kimmo Alkio the new CEO of Finnish security company, F-Secure, about the mechanics of online threats.

A very obvious point is malware writing is one of the few opportunities for a smart young programmer in the developing world. That's one of the reasons for the explosion in malware, phishing and spam. The Internet allows these opportunities from anywhere.

Where I would disagree with Kimmo is that mobile phone viruses and spyware are the stage now that PCs were at in the late 1980s.

In the late 1980s we were seeing the first viruses and they were spread by floppy disks with the odd ones lurking on message boards. The problem was there and the mass adoption of the Internet just took it to another level.

On the other hand, there's no reported mass outbreaks of mobile phone viruses which we would be seeing if there was a problem.

I suspect this is partly because mobile phones are used differently. People don't expect, or use, the functionality of a PC in a mobile and the telcos are reluctant to let their customers use such functionality because it allows the customer to break free of the Telco's content controls.

Kimmo makes a couple of other very good points: ISPs need to take more responsibility for protecting their customers and we need a .bank domain.

A .bank domain could be setup that only legitimate banks can sign up to. Having a reasonably secure domain means Internet banking because more secure.

On the other hand, were governments to make ISPs more responsible for security, we'd see a marked drop in spam, phishing viruses and compromised machines. I'd suggest making ISPs partly responsible for damages caused by compromised machines or swindlers on their network if the ISP can't show they've taken reasonable steps to close down errant account holders.

There's a few challenging ideas there that can be used to reduce Internet based crime.