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McAfee Retracts Lowball Bug Damage Estimate
bennyboy64 writes "McAfee has changed its official response [warning: interstitial] on how many enterprise customers were affected by a bug that caused havoc on computers globally. It originally stated the bug affected 'less than half of 1 per cent' of enterprise customers. Now McAfee's blog states it was a 'small percentage' of enterprise customers. ZDNet is running a poll and opinion piece on whether McAfee should compensate customers. ZDNet notes a supermarket giant in Australia that had to close down its stores as they were affected by the bug, causing a loss of thousands of dollars."
First, McAfee blew this big time, that such a bug made it to production shows a complete breakdown in their internal processes. XP with SP3 is the number one OS combination in enterprise environments, and should have been the first thing that they tested on. Without doubt McAfee has liability on this and needs to get aggressive about damage control with clients.
That being said, every one of these clients that was hit by this is just as guilty as McAfee is! They are in no better shape and those responsible need to be going management review for their failure. Enterprise Management 101 - nothing goes into production that has not been tested in a lab for pre-pilot and a small group of production computers for pilot! This is as basic as enterprise management gets. Every single environment that was taken down by this shows professional incompetence by their requisite IT departments.
The only question is if it is the fault of management for failing to allow the budget and support needed for a lab for testing or if it is the fault of the IT staffer who never tested things as they should. This is without doubt one of the most public examples of IT incompetence to make the news in years. This is a case of sheer and utter incompetence by every affected party and no pity should be given. If pity were to be given, give it to the poor desktop techs that have to go around making apologies and manual fixes for everything.
A buddy of mine is in IT at a college in the area. This affected almost all of their computers. Although it's harder to put a dollar figure on, the students and professors were NOT happy when all of the computer labs on campus went down, along with a "server" or two. Ever seen professors gets mad ? Now imagine your an IT guy and the professors can't access their online grade books that you pushed them into using. I really think McAfee is going to have a big problem on it's hands come contract renewal time. Pissed off IT people have long memories!