Is Reputation Even Less Relevant Today?

With the news that the IPv4 addresses have run out, another nail is put in the coffin of using reputation ratings for fighting malware and threats. Why? It's simple. In addition to the fact that hackers are attacking and inserting threats in sites that have good reputations, there's the fact that the lack of IPv4 address space is going to drive people to reuse old IPv4 address space where ever it's available.

If you're one of the unlucky ones to get an old IPv4 address that previously hosted malware it's likely you're also inheriting the reputation rating of the previous web site. The more this happens, the more quickly you'll see reputation ratings use start to decrease. While we may still find some use for reputation ratings, I believe you'll find it will have a less impact in determining the threat rating on a site. Threats really need to be analyzed in real time as new threats can come up at any time and at any web site.