Sparky left Anonymous, saying that the group wasn't doing much more than just "getting kids arrested." S/he is in the process of moving to the States, perhaps to take some formal CS classes. S/he cautions any would-be hacker to stay away from black-hat hacking. "You go for a job and it is down to you and someone else. You both have the same qualifications and are good at what you do. They do a background check on both of you... his is clean, yours says you hacked a server and put all the data online... Who will they give the job? It won't be you."

Sparky has a great list of preventative measures that corporations should take to beef up their security, including:

• Deploy defense-in-depth
  
• Use a strict information security policy
  
• Have regular audits of your security by an outside firm
  
• Use IDS or IPS
  
• Teach your staff about information security
  
• Teach your staff about social engineering
  
• Keep your software and hardware up to date
  
• Watch security sites for news on computer security and learn what the new attacks are
  
• Let your sysadmins go to defcon ;D
  
• Get good sysadmins who understand security
  
• Encrypt your data (something like AES-256)
  
• Use spam filters
  
• Keep an eye on what information you are letting out into the public domain
  
• Use good physical security. What good is all the [security] software if someone could just walk in and take [your "secure" systems]?

It is worth reading the entire post, although no great insights into the hacking mystique there. What is interesting is how much social engineering - misrepresenting yourself as a trusted employee - can still deliver the goods.