The Costs of Patching

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday May 1, 2003 @07:21AM from the we-all-have-t1s-now-anyway-right dept.

prestidigital writes "vnunet has a brief but interesting article in which Craig Fiebig, general manager of Microsoft's security business unit, is quoted as saying "In dollar terms, patching is the most expensive security measures and keeping your antivirus descriptions up to date is the least." That seems like an important statement coming from a company who's patches are possibly responsible for 45% of traffic on some networks."

12 of 303 comments (clear)

Patching has saved my hundreds of dollars by Anonymous Coward · 2003-05-01 07:25 · Score: 5, Funny

Rather than throwing away an otherwise perfectly good pair of pants, patches have allowed me to fix them and extend their life. In some cases, patches can even be fashionable. Sewing is a great skill that all geeks should learn.
1. Re:Patching has saved my hundreds of dollars by Ravenscall · 2003-05-01 07:46 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Well, it certainly is more socially acceptable than damning them
  
  --
  You say you want a revolution....
interesting debate by ih8apple · 2003-05-01 07:27 · Score: 4, Funny

This document was part of an interesting debate over the last year and a half between MS and Novell over whose product was more buggy (measured in terms of number of patches.)

(Google cache version in html.)

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Why do I h8 apple?
1. Re:interesting debate by zero-one · 2003-05-01 07:50 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Yup, that document was funny. I liked this bit: "Additionally, Novell has neglected to be clear about the fact that GroupWise runs on Windows NT and Windows 2000, so patches that apply to Exchange customers also apply to GroupWise customer running a GroupWise system on Windows systems". So Microsoft are arguing that Novel haven't taken full account of the security issues due to Microsoft in a report bashing Microsoft. I am not sure that is an argument that Microsoft should be shouting about!
Lamers by grub · 2003-05-01 07:29 · Score: 4, Funny

Pff.. you lamers with your fancy-pants Windows or your free Linux or *BSDs are all clueless. I haven't patched my Apple ][+'s DOS3.3 for 20 years and it still has yet to be 0wned.

--
Trolling is a art,
Re:Lamers - Oh Yeah? by freeze128 · 2003-05-01 07:32 · Score: 3, Funny

Try to enter today's date in Appleworks.
Re:Well then... by Bendebecker · 2003-05-01 07:33 · Score: 3, Funny

And maybe I should spend more time proofreading my own posts so that I don't mangle words so much!

--
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Re:Lamers - Oh Yeah? by grub · 2003-05-01 07:35 · Score: 5, Funny

Yeah and? Today is Thursday, May 1 10003.

--
Trolling is a art,
Re:NEW MATH by clambake · 2003-05-01 07:41 · Score: 4, Funny

responsible for 45% of traffic

But spam is responsible for, what was it Taco, 60% of traffic on networks?

I'm at 105% utilization already!

Didn't you see that the article was about Microsoft? I'm sure there is at least SOME overlap in the spam/patch metrics.
Re:Cost of not patching? by B3ryllium · 2003-05-01 07:42 · Score: 4, Funny

Fist a high level person
Yeah! That's right! Fight the power!
patches hurt people too by dwgranth · 2003-05-01 08:10 · Score: 3, Funny

Man, I can attest to this... patches... especially ones that screw up systems not only cost time/money/bandwidth but they cost HAIR.. yes thats right... admins lose their hair b/c of the stress this makes them go through..... ::looks in the mirror:: arrhhggghh..
Re:Wow...it took them this long... by vsprintf · 2003-05-01 10:50 · Score: 3, Funny

Hey, I know, maybe Microsoft could do these new things called DESIGN REVIEW and CODE REVIEW, rather than trying to test out bugs.

You must have missed it. After Bill declared a new focus on security, they did a code review -- one month of review for twenty years of code. The next code review is scheduled for 2022. :)