RE: Re[2]: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause

["Schmehl, Paul L" <pauls () utdallas edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: full-disclosure-admin () lists netsys com 
> [mailto:full-disclosure-admin () lists netsys com] On Behalf Of 
> Joris De Donder
> Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 2:31 PM
> To: full-disclosure () lists netsys com
> Subject: Re[2]: [Full-disclosure] January 15 is Personal 
> Firewall Day, help the cause
>
> Conclusion: The purely technical solution (with obvious commercial
> intentions) proposed by personalfirewallday.org will lead to 
> a false sense of security, resulting in more insecure systems.
> User Education is an essential part of the solution.
I must say that I've been absolutely amazed by the negative reactions to
this.  You complain that what "annie" needs is education.  The
personalfirewallday.org site does *precisely* that.  Have any of the
people criticizing the effort even bothered to go look at the site?  I
finally did, just to see what all the fuss was about.

I found:
1) A vision statement
2) An explanation of why you need protection, including information
about viruses, worms, trojans and hackers
2) An explanation of what layered protection is and why you can't depend
upon just one security product
3) Explanations of personal firewalls, antivirus protection and OS
updating and links to resources for each

Everything you claim "annie" needs is right there on that one website.
And you think that's a *bad* thing?  I realize it is possible to be so
blinded by hatred that you can't even think logically, but I didn't
realize how many in this industry were blind.

I understand what the penguin-heads are up to, but I would have
*thought* that people who *claim* to care about security would applaud
any effort to increase public awareness.  Boy, was I wrong!

Paul Schmehl (pauls () utdallas edu)
Adjunct Information Security Officer
The University of Texas at Dallas
AVIEN Founding Member
http://www.utdallas.edu/~pauls/ 

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