Jeremy wrote:
] If you are unable to actually solve your problems, you can at
] least generate a lot of paperwork to document those failures
] for posterity.

I tend to agree. These problems are not the result of negligence. They are the result of complexity. Clearly the standards for handling all of this stuff are not "stable" enough to warrant the kind of controls that are possible in the automotive industry. These rules would create barrriers to entry for small companies (which is why Microsoft likes them), but would do little to improve the situation (this code is already subject to review).

Security is a systemic problem and it requires a systemic solution. The original White House plan emboddied the right kind of approach and I don't think we should change course in a reactionary way. I still haven't seen the stuff in the WhiteHouse strategy come down the pipe ::

1. Government systems should be audited and subject to stringent standards.
2. Essential non-goverment systems should also be subject to standards. The existing HIPPA regulations are not an unreasonable starting point.
3. There ought to be clearing houses for information about vulnerabilities and good administrative practices.
4. Network service providers should be required to implement certain basic restrictions, such as anti-spoofing filters on the network's edge. We ought to offer tax subsidies and liability shelters to ISPs that "keep there house clean" in terms of scanning their customer's networks, running IDS systems, and moving "owned" customer machines off of the internet until they can be repaired.
5. This stuff ought to trickle down all the way to the home user. Home computer users ought to get messages from Tom Ridge telling them to keep their patches up to date. Your personal internet security status impacts all of us.

Implicit in all of this mostly educational effort ought to be the message that computer security, much like preventing forest fires, is everybody's job. You ought to think about it.

We need to train people to think about how their computers expose them to the network. What services are they offering? Should they implement NBT for file sharing, or something like WebDAV? Furthermore, we need to train people to feel personal ownership of the computer security problem and be responsible about it.

This is not a silver bullet, but it would certainly have been possible for the 500,000 machines that got infected with blaster to have patched their systems beforehand. How hard is it to click that Windows Update button when it flashes? Solid efforts to train people to do this will pay off in less costly incidents.

RE: Digital Vandalism Spurs a Call for Oversight