Electronic data loss: malice or missteps?

[mea culpa <jericho () DIMENSIONAL COM>]

From: darek.milewski () us pwcglobal com

http://www.chicago.tribune.com/tech/specialreport/article/0,2669,ART-34595,FF.html

Electronic data loss: malice or missteps?

By Darnell Little
Tribune Staff Writer
September 17, 1999

Worried about computer viruses like Toadie, ExploreZip and Melissa? Maybe
you shouldn't be. When it comes to electronic data loss, malicious viruses
are no match for the daily missteps of average computer users, according
to a poll released this summer.

Out of the 300 Microsoft Windows NT administrators surveyed in the study,
88 percent said accidental deletions of computer files by in-house workers
caused most of their headaches, while only 3 percent said viruses were a
major problem.

"There is a tremendous amount of media coverage on viruses and the amount
of damage that viruses can cause, but even in some of the oldest studies
that I've pulled up, viruses only account for 3 to 7 percent of all data
loss," said Phil Proffit, director of research for Broadcasters Network
International, the California-based market research firm that conducted
the study.

"I can understand why the media covers viruses so much, it's a sexy
topic,"  Proffit said. "And yet there is this vastly larger amount of data
and productivity being loss due to accidental deletions. If we try to
place a dollar value on it, it would just be billions and billions of
dollars being lost in terms of productivity."

The poll focused only on Windows NT because of the operating system's
growing popularity among business users and because there is a general
belief among system administrators that Windows users are less technically
adept than users on other operating systems, according to Proffit.

"Unix users tend to be better educated than NT users," he said. "And
uneducated users are the single largest source of accidental deletions.
It's just that on Unix-based systems, either the system administrators
have been more clever about how they protect certain critical files on
servers or the users themselves tend to be a bit more educated on exactly
what the program can and can't do.

"This isn't to say that educated users aren't making mistakes. But the
uneducated user is a greater risk on NT systems because they have the
Recycle Bin sitting there and they think, 'Great, if I make a deletion
it's caught, it's not a big deal.'"

[snip..]

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