RE: How to Save The World (was: Antivirus vendor conspiracy theories)

["Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr () ranum com>]

Ben Nagy wrote:
> In any case, changing away from IE is simply not going to happen for many
> environments, and Desktop Support aren't liable to consider their AV vendor
> to be the world authority on what browser they should be running.

Isn't this amazing, if you think about it? Enterprise IT managers are
such freakin' morons that they'd rather pay $50/year/desktop plus
some kind of boundary humming black doo-dad than to move their
users to a free alternative browser that isn't the target of choice!
Heck, for the amount of $$$$ some companies spend on "proactive
security" (read: dumb stuff) they could own-brand their own browser
and IMAP client and remove the stupid automation and execution
features that cause 80% of the problems.

Then, these same IT managers say "we can't use non-standard
software because the support costs are too high" yet they
cheerfully accept the support costs of patching Windows broken
whatever weekly, and the support costs of spyware cleanup, etc.
"We can't do in-house development" but they spend a gadzillion
bucks on con$ultants to set up their "off the shelf software" and
never ponder that "off the shelf" ought to mean something like,
"it works without needing 'customization'"   Then, they decide it's
all too much of a headache and sweep the entire problem under
the carpet by outsourcing it to the lowest bidder - as
if( lowest_bidder == most_qualified ) { ...

The high tech industry is supposed to have been created and
moved forward by really smart people. I'm damned if I can see
where they all went, but they sure ain't here anymore!*

mjr.
(*That includes me. If I was smart enough to have parlayed my
reputation as a security geek into a decent paying job as a beer
drinker or mattress tester or photographer, do you think I'd still
be here?) 

_______________________________________________
firewall-wizards mailing list
firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com
http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards