Re: Security vs accessibility?

True, I don't know of any organisation that has paid more than $100  
million as a result of any single security flaw being exploited. I guess  
it depends on what you call "small amount of harm". Actually security  
breaches in Linux systems cost money too. The biggest one I know of  
personally had a cost of tens of thousands, in a fairly small  
organisation. Bob is right - there is an industry working here, because  
these things are costing a lot in direct damage. Not to mention the  
millions of dollars worth of infrastructure and ordinary folks' time tied  
up in forwarding messages created by exploiting security flaws in Outlook.

You may be able to get security for free in Open Source systems, and I  
agree that in my personal experience the systems are better secured, but  
you do need to make the effort to keep them up to date - just as you do  
with Microsoft or other systems. Security is a real issue for atual  
users.  Worse, one of the reasons why I waste so much time dealing with my  
system security and spam cleaning is because other people outside my  
control have poor security practices and use rubbish software, that  
compromises my system and takes up actual time during every single working  
day. That's a cost.

cheers

Chaals

On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 09:43:52 -0400 (EDT), Access Systems  
<accessys@smart.net> wrote:

>> Reality check - the most vicious attacks on Microsoft products have at
>> best resulted in a relatively small amount of harm.  NO lock, security

> duh,?? ask the folks attacked how much harm has been caused, heck it is a
> whole industry.  people are expected to "pay $$$" for security to norton,
> to macaffee and others.  You never have to pay for security in open  
> source software, it is built in or free downloads



-- 
Charles McCathieNevile     charles@sidar.org
Fundción Sidar             http://www.sidar.org

Received on Tuesday, 20 July 2004 20:19:41 UTC