The Internet’s sharks are not only still in the ocean, they’re getting a lot closer to shore. According to Thursday’s Washington Post:

Approximately 5.5 million malicious software programs were unleashed on the Web last year, according to AV Test Labs, a German company that measures how quickly and accurately anti-virus products detect the latest malicious software…. That volume, AV said, forced anti-virus firms to analyze between 15,000 and 20,000 new specimens each day — more than four times the daily average they found in 2006, and at least 15 times as many the company recorded in 2005. In the first two months of 2008 alone, AV Test found more than one million samples of malware spreading online.

“Back in 1990 we were seeing a handful of new viruses each week,” said David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro, an anti-virus company headquartered in Japan. “Now, we’re having to analyze between 2,000 and 3,000 new viruses per hour.”

Much of this is coming from organized gangs outside the U.S. stealing passwords, credit card numbers and other financial information from unsuspecting Net users.

And speaking of illegal behavior, Paul Sweeting at ContentAgenda reports that FCC Jonathan Adelstein said this week that Net Neutrality would not cover illegal behavior online, including copyright infringement and illegal P2P sharing.

So here’s the latest version of the question that Net Neutrality advocates refuse to face: With Net Neutrality pushing a “dumb network” regulatory structure over the web, just how are network engineers supposed to keep up with exploding challenges from viruses, malware, and other illegal behavior?