“Dealing with widespread worms like Sasser raises the cost of using Windows, a research analyst said Wednesday,” Gregg Keizer reports for TechWeb News. “Mark Nicolett, research director at Gartner, recommended that enterprises boost spending on patch management and intrusion prevention software to keep ahead of worms, which are appearing ever sooner after vulnerabilities in Windows are disclosed.”
“‘This is part of the carrying cost of using Windows,’ said Nicolett. ‘The cost of a Windows environment has gone up because enterprises have to install security patches very rapidly, deal with outages caused by secondary problems with these patches, and deploy additional layers of security technology.’ Although he placed some caveats on his numbers, Nicolett said that informal surveys with Gartner clients indicate that simply moving from a no rapid patch deployment capability to an ongoing process that can respond quickly to vulnerabilities raises the cost of using business by about 15 percent,” Keizer reports.
“Nicolett’s advice stemmed from the recent outbreak of the Sasser worm, which began striking Windows systems last Friday and has infected a large number of machines world-wide, with estimates ranging from 100,000 to well into the millions,” Keizer reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What we really need is a study that shows how much Mac OS X costs to use over the long haul, with Software Update automatically doing its thing, and no viruses or worms or spyware or adware on constant attack. The results of such a study wouldn’t be very complimentary of Microsoft Windows TCO, it would seem.
