

LOCKIT UCSD PC
But standard protection would probably cause PC sales with the new Windows version to go through the roof. Theyll keep botnets in business for a long time.

If such protection were a standard part of Windows, the threat would still take at least several years to go away because lots of people never upgrade. Most of them depend on users being unprotected, and they dont have to infect many systems to be worth writing.

Thousands of threats come out every year, but very few of them are able to penetrate a system with a modern, updated security suite. One way to solve this-please be patient with me, this is a thought exercise-would be for Microsoft to bundle a high-quality anti-malware product with Windows and make updates either free or very inexpensive.īefore I go any further, this isnt going to happen for a number of reasons, the biggest being that it would put Microsoft in extremely hot water with antitrust authorities and that producing and distributing updates costs money, and Microsoft wouldnt be keen on creating a perpetual cost center.īut the upside, unless youre one of Microsofts competitors, is huge. These users are, for all practical purposes, unprotected.
LOCKIT UCSD SOFTWARE
Of course, a huge percentage of users dont run anti-virus software or run out-of-date versions. The alternative is anti-virus, intrusion prevention and similar products that look for threats either heuristically or by signature.
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To make a system secure in the real world you could lock it down tight, a configuration that normal users wont accept since they expect to be able to install and update software, not to mention reconfigure their systems. To a degree this is in the works for Vista, but it can only go so far. It is in a better position to fight them by changing Windows. Of course, thats all fantasy, since Microsoft is in no better a position to solve our endemic security problems through its security products than any other vendor. For another, the history of the software business is littered with Microsoft failures, although once it does latch on to a market, it never lets go. Its the interests of users that should really matter. And customers can reasonably ask whether it makes sense to use a vendors security products to protect systems and applications software from the same vendor.īut even in the consumer market Im not especially worried about these other vendors for a number of reasons, For one thing, theyre only vendors. Microsoft enters that market not only with no advantage but with a lot of explaining to do. Buyers are sophisticated and know they have plenty of credible options. Will Microsofts entry be their doom, as it has been in so many other businesses? The anti-virus, anti-spyware and other security markets are not the same as previous cases.Īs analysts point out in Matt Hines excellent story, the enterprise security market is a totally different animal. But eventually it should actually happen.Īnd when it happens independent security vendors interests will be threatened, according to many analysts. Its been about to happen for years and now it will take a little longer. You could see it coming for years: Microsofts entry into the security business will be treacherous for other security vendors.
