Insecure Software Costs US $180B per Year - Application and Perimeter Security News Analysis - Dark Reading

[michaelslists at gmail.com (silky)]

your plan would simply result in vendors denying the existence of bugs.

i still think all these ideas are wrong and the model is simple: don't
employ people who write and generate insecure code. it's just part of
programming. you wouldn't hire a doctor to be a gardener. don't hire
an idiot to program your apps.


On 11/30/07, Andy Steingruebl <steingra at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 29, 2007 2:47 PM, Kenneth Van Wyk <ken at krvw.com> wrote:
> > The article quotes David Rice, who has a book out called
> > "Geekconomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software".  In it, he tried
> > to quantify how much insecure software costs the public and, more
> > controversially, proposes a "vulnerability tax" on software
> > developers.  He believes such a tax would result in more secure
> > software.
>
> I like contractual approaches to this problem myself.  People buying
> large quantities of software (large enterprises, governments) should
> get contracts with vendors that specify money-back for each patch they
> have to apply where the root cause is of a given type.  For example, I
> get money back every time the vendor has a vulnerability and patch
> related to a buffer overflow.
>
> I wrote a small piece about this:
> http://securityretentive.blogspot.com/2007/09/buffer-overflows-are-like-hospital.html
>
> Turns out that the federal government isn't paying for avoidable
> outcomes anymore.  Certain things fall into the rough category of
> "negligence" and so aren't covered.  We ought to just do this for
> software via a contracts mechanism.  I'm not sure we want to start out
> with a big-bang public-policy approach on this issue.  We'd want to
> know a lot more about how the economics work out on a small scale
> before applying it to all software.
>
> --
> Andy Steingruebl
> steingra at gmail.com
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-- 
mike
http://lets.coozi.com.au/