Newsflash: Gartner says social-networking technology could be the next security threat. Or maybe not the next one, but soon. Or maybe not soon, but eventually. You know, like they have noticed that people use social networking and software delivered over the Internet so those are probably going to have some security issues with them, and at some point you should probably think about it. Maybe think about it right about when you are already thinking about it and say to yourself “oh, yeah, Gartner said this would be a problem“.

Pescatore didn’t provide specific timeframes for these next-generation threats, but he says they could hit anywhere from two to six years from now.

“Threat forecasting is fun – it’s like weather forecasting and about as precise as weather forecasting,” Pescatore says. “But the key is if the climate changes, we want to understand it.”

Great stuff. Gartner, thanks for offering to understand and notify me of climate change after it has already happened, or predict that the weather will be different two to six years from now.

This smells a lot less like weather forecasting and more like gag-gift rocks that say “If I’m wet, it’s raining; If I’m missing, it’s really, really windy”.