Enterprise-wide Browser Upgrades, IE, and Patching?

newkid asks: "Our company needs to upgrade its standard browser, a difficult decision when we factor security, compatibility and the logistics of actually doing it. For compatibility, Internet Explorer is required by internal applications like IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, so we have to keep it. On the security front, expert bulletins keep ranting every week about the latest gaping holes in IE but nobody really seems concerned: for example, many on-line banking services only work in IE, and they don't check for patches. Meanwhile, users do not care, as a large portion of the traffic still comes from IE 5.5, a version discontinued by Microsoft. As for logistics,the software distribution technology and the cost of patching both make the project much larger than we can undertake this year. Our two options are: roll-out IE without patching, or roll-out IE and Netscape, but lock IE so it can only surf on intranet sites, and update NS with rsync or Ant. What is your company doing? What is your strategy? How serious are the security threats? What are the documented security breach caused by IE? We need a reality check."

Comments

Quick and dirty...

[dnight]

Send an anonymous email with the Microsoft IE download link to the entire corporation, the day before you take a vacation. If your helpdesk is up to snuff, it should be all set when you get back.

Oh, and look for snakes in your office when you get back.

Patch management

[mbstone]

You have to apply the latest Microsoft patches right away, or hackers will come along and break your system. But the patches themselves will break your system once you apply them. You might as well give up now, and krazy-glue the ctrl-alt-and del keys to the bottom of you keyboard.

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If it doesn't fit, file it. But it gets dirty and you can't clean it. So you have to THORW IT AWAY!!