2007 is shaping up as the year of Web worms, according to US-based Web application specialist Jeremiah Grossman.

I was fortunate enough to interview the man yesterday, and he had some very interesting things to say. See, Jeremiah had just released the results of his third monthly survey into Web application security.

And, according to the 60 or so Web application security experts he questioned, 2007 will be a big year for Web application security. Can you believe it???

I would personally be more inclined to ask a combination of CSOs, general IT security consultants AND specialists like Web application coders about what will be hot in the next year. The problem with asking people in niche areas, especially niche areas within security, what they think will be big over the next 12 months is they'll always tell you that their particular field is where the action is.

That's not to say surveys like Jeremiah's aren't useful. In fact, much of the data he collected was very impressive. He ranked, for example, the most popular tools used to audit Web applications according to survery results. For a generalist IT security type who likes to dabble in Web app auditing, that sort of list is gold. And for a journalist like myself, tasked with covering a field as complicated as security, surveys like Jeremiah's are fantastic fodder, even though they're not statistically valid.

The Web 2.0 explosion has seen a boom in online polls. It seems every Tom, Dick and Harry is happy to whack up a poll, ignoring pesky little statistical problems like self-selection bias and massively skewed demographics. However, in highly technical fields, as was the case with Jeremiah's survey, the results are actually useful.

You'd think the maintsream media would do polling and surveys better, and for the most part, they do. Newspapers hire polling organisations to conduct valid political polls, often asking random subjects if they will participate in the survey before they even tell them what the survey is on.

Then there are the TV networks. Monday night's classic push-poll question from Channel 10 news, which was tied to the decision of Big Day Out organisers to ban flags at the event over fears it could be used as a symbol of Anglo supremecy, was this: "Do you think Australians should be banned from flying the flag?"

It's right up there with "Do you think the Prime Minister should eat puppies and drink babies' blood?"

I'll take the bloggers' surveys over that sort of ridiculous, populist nationalism dressed up as current affairs any day. And I think it will be a while before The Australian newspaper conducts a NewsPoll on the relative merits of Nikto and Nessus.

So in the meantime, head over to Jeremiah's blog for a taste of the survey results.