Windows Security

oxymoron - n : conjoining contradictory terms (as in `deafening silence')
Source :WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University

I have a temporary, short-term contract at the moment for a company that needs to check the compliance of their thousands of desktop PCs with various Windows security patches, updates, anti-virus software, etc. I have very mixed feelings about this job.

It's a job (that's good) and provides an income (something I haven't had in well over a year). It's mostly Perl (and what isn't Perl is VBScript, which, while lame, isn't arduous). It's entirely done on Windows, which is not my favorite operating system...

And therein lies the rub.

This job exists entirely due to the Windows connection. This company has upwards of 8000 desktop PCs running Windows 2000 or Windows XP (and several hundred Windows servers as well). Their upper management wants to ensure that they don't get hit by some virus or worm or other "exploit". (Last Friday, there was a meeting called for an urgent problem — the latest Blaster variant was on the move! Were the systems complaint?! Would they survive an attack?!?)

Windows is, shall we say... a virus magnet? An exceedingly popular target? A problem waiting to happen?

According to an article published Aug 21, 2003

In a report released last month, Sophos PLC, a British company that sells anti-virus software, noted that through the first six months of 2003, the most commonly reported virus that could affect Mac computers was one designed for the "classic" Mac OS -- not OS X. It placed 78th on the company's list.

Sophos compared that to the top 10 most-reported viruses, all targeted at Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, which accounted for more than half of all the attacks over the period.

Not that it was a fair competition. According to Security Focus, a computer security information Web site owned by Symantec Corp., the Cupertino, Calif.-based maker of the Norton brand of anti-virus products, the number of viruses written for the classic Mac OS is about 50.

By comparison, security experts estimate the number of Windows-specific viruses at about 70,000, though the exact count depends upon how you classify all the variations of a single virus or worm.

70,000 in six months? Tracking, installing, updating, and ensuring the compliance of Windows security patches, anti-virus software, and similar bandaids (er, solutions) would appear to be a fulltime job. If this company I'm doing the contract for would switch to Linux or BSD or Mac OS X (or Solaris, or AIX, or HP/UX, or...), they'd save considerable money, time, effort, and frustration.

On the other hand, if they didn't use Windows, I wouldn't have a contract (and an income, even a temporary one). Of course, I wouldn't have an hour-long commute twice a day either...