SECURITY ADVISER: Good news, bad news - In retrospect, you had it easy last year when it came to security -- don't plan on it happening twice.

THE GOOD NEWS is that the only companies that really had problems with worms, viruses, and other malicious code last year were companies without decent firewalls, such as those that depended strictly on anti- virus software to keep them safe.

The bad news is that those happy and carefree days are over. If you didn't use last year's relative lull in attacks to upgrade the protection on your enterprise, you're just gonna hate 2003.

The reason 2002 was a relative walk in the park was twofold. First, the people who write malicious code were still learning the ropes. While NIMDA and Code Red were relatively successful in attacking personal computers, companies …