It’s a bit of a vicious cycle: Greedy, bad actors taking advantage of the good times until good times end in bad times and a different set of greedy, bad actors start taking advantage of the bad times—and there goes a little more faith in humanity.
When the press and the security industry weren’t obsessed with the non-event of the Conficker.C worm, warnings went out about laid-off employee sabotage and theft, spam targeting the financially concerned and technological clueless. Today’s stern warning is about industrial espionage.