The growth of the security industry and the continuing evolution of the threat landscape, and the subsequent importance businesses, consumers and even governments, have placed on computer security is evident in many of the selections made by the Agenda Setters 2005 panel.

Some are more obvious than others. Take John Thompson (number 15) for example, the CEO of security vendor Symantec. But also consider the inclusion, high up the list of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (6), who can play a major part in shaping both the political and technological sides of the security sector.

Wen and China are at the forefront of the digital rights management debate and the protection of intellectual property. The country’s views on encryption and federated identity will be interesting to observe as business links develop with the west.

China also has a major role to play in cleaning up the internet. Importantly the country signed up for the London Action Plan on Spam earlier this year having been very conspicuous by its absence when the plan was originally drafted.

Such initiatives won't make the problem go away but it does suggest China is willing to at least discuss the matter with other governments and international law enforcement agencies. The Chinese government is also talking to a number of vendors in an attempt to start getting its own house in order. That task will involve cleaning up its outbound traffic, as China is seen as a safe haven for the servers which contribute huge amounts of traffic to the global spam overload.

China is second only to the US in terms of generating such rogue traffic.

Of course the issue of malware is never going to be far from the security debate and those responsible, whether we like it or not, are Agenda Setters.

As such, the Agenda Setters panel voted to include organised criminals (17) on the list for the part they are believed to play in creating networks of 'bot-nets' - broadband-connected PCs infected with Trojan applications.

Once created, these bot-nets can be rented out to spammers, or used to create more bot-nets by sending mass mailings laden with Trojans, or spyware for the purposes of data theft. The bot-nets can also be used to launch denial of service attacks.

In the past, virus writers were seen as disaffected loners, scripting programs in their mum's basement. In the past couple of years there has been a marked change. The business use of malware means organised crime began to employ those with the ability to turn their skills into millions of dollars worth of malicious network traffic.

Martin Brampton, consultant and Agenda Setters panellist, said: "It is a serious issue. There are large numbers of machines under the control of small groups of people who are involved in fairly rough games of control and bribery."

A group of security experts analysing the dark side of the web also made it onto the list. George Kurtz, Stuart McClure, Joel Scambray (33), the authors of Hacking Exposed, got a strong endorsement from Neil Barrett, security consultant and panellist.

Barrett said during the debate: "There are three names that leap out immediately because they wrote the book that's causing the greatest problems - that's Stuart McClure, Joel Scambray and George Kurtz. They wrote the book Hacking Exposed. And it's currently being used by everybody who's doing any sort of training courses on ethical hacking and by the hackers who are trying to learn how to do it. So it's both the IT and the nerds."

Rob Chapman, founder of the Training Camp which runs ethical hacking courses, agreed, saying the authors have played an important part in getting the malware issues into the public domain.

Another security inclusion on the list is Ross Anderson (48), cryptography expert at Cambridge University, who is analysing the biometrics underpinning the UK ID card system. He is a highly respected commentator on many areas of security and could prove a powerful voice of opposition to the government's plans.

And what of the vendors? Already we've mentioned Symantec's Thompson who will play a vital role in the way the industry shakes up over the coming 12 months. As the head of one of the most acquisitive companies in the world Thompson is almost a by-word for consolidation in the security space.

In the past two years Thompson has steered Symantec through major acquisitions, such as Brightmail, Sygate and more remarkably Veritas which was a colossal deal in any industry. Expect this trend to continue, with the next move possibly in the managed security services sector.

Looking to the future, Symantec and Microsoft will both be keeping a close eye on one another. Symantec had the most to lose when Microsoft announced plans to 'do security'.

A traditional box shifter to the consumer market - which is Microsoft's playground - Symantec has rapidly begun to weatherproof its reliance upon top money-spinner Norton Antivirus for the day Microsoft starts releasing antivirus products.

Microsoft is now most definitely making those moves. Recent acquisitions are taking shape and the intellectual property the company has bought to develop antivirus and anti-spyware products is already seeing the light of day.

The software giant's entrance into the security market will determine much of the change we will see in the industry.

Given all this, it's surprising Microsoft's showing on the list isn't stronger. But as in previous years Steve Ballmer (14) and Bill Gates (20) split the Microsoft vote.

Yet despite the list’s energetic showing from security companies and experts, there are arguably many more names which could have made it onto the list - because security is, without a doubt, going to be the issue at the heart of the coming year's technology agenda.