I thought I was gonna throw up.

Just to give you one example of important stuff I lost - my web pages are naturally stored on my computer's hard drive as well as my websites. Nearly half my website files were infected!

I thought I was gonna throw up.

Well, as far as I can tell, everything's fixed now, but I'm still a little queasy.

Learn from my mistake, and keep your automatic virus protection on ALL time!

Let's look at another analogy. Suppose you bought a car. Now, as anyone who has owned a car for any length of time knows, you have to change oil occasionally. You can forget all other maintenance, but you had better change oil.

I knew someone who had bought his first car. He didn't change oil, even after several people (including myself) suggested that it would be a good idea. One day his car stopped working. He was very angry, claimed no one had told him anything, dealer was evil, he would never buy that brand of car again, and other nonsense.

What's point? Microsoft has indeed been lax in designing security into it's products. There is no question about that. However, fault is not totally with that company, and poorly designed security does not make Bill Gates or others in his company evil.

There are many other companies with horribly insecure products. Security is something that must be given a priority in product development or it is often simply overlooked and under-designed, and testing is generally not adequate. One simply fact: security is generally not a money maker for these kinds of products.

Actually, until September 11th stressed importance, it was very common for IT managers to completely skip security in their network and infrastructure planning. Even now security is not high on many agendas.

Oh yes, most of my colleagues do think about security and are trying to do something, but it's tough to get managers and others to actually put their money where their mouth is.

Okay, back to point - security is a shared responsibility. We all have to practice security. Users must install antivirus software and keep definitions up-to-date. Firewalls must be added and used properly. The operating systems must be updated occasionally, and security bulletins must be reviewed once in a while.

It's same as if you owned a car, you are expected to read owners manual and bring it to mechanic occasionally. If you've got a house, you had better be spending some time making some improvements. And if you've got a computer you should learn about it. Otherwise, it just might bite you back - just like a car, a house or anything else in your life.

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