I would venture to guess myself that software is very hard to regulate in a normal sense. On complex pieces of code (KISS standard aside) it is nigh impossible to completely prevent bugs 100%of the time. That's the ideal, but that's why we call it ideal.
If a bug occurred in a very unique situation, and it took 20 years for that situation to come about and it caused just one death, people would still ask, "Why wasn't anything done to prevent this?" Something was done (hopefully), and standards and regulations help, but in the end that's pretty much all you can do.
I don't think he's asking as much about viruses or hackers in this case, but those are also valid questions. I tend to believe what is stated downstairs in this argument -- I've seen Unix systems that were wide open and Windows Boxes sealed tighter than a drum, and it's up to the admin. I'm not really sure if there's a test or anything that sysadmins must pass to become licensed sysadmins, but if there isn't (and I'm not talking about certification) there should be one, at least as far as sensitive data like this is concerned.
Also, a real life situation when computer software caused multiple deaths was in the case of the London Ambulance Service, which used a very poorly constructed computer system and was directly linked to 20 or 30 deaths (due to late ambulances) in the few days it was active.
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I would venture to guess myself that software is very hard to regulate in a normal sense. On complex pieces of code (KISS standard aside) it is nigh impossible to completely prevent bugs 100%of the time. That's the ideal, but that's why we call it ideal.
If a bug occurred in a very unique situation, and it took 20 years for that situation to come about and it caused just one death, people would still ask, "Why wasn't anything done to prevent this?" Something was done (hopefully), and standards and regulations help, but in the end that's pretty much all you can do.
I don't think he's asking as much about viruses or hackers in this case, but those are also valid questions. I tend to believe what is stated downstairs in this argument -- I've seen Unix systems that were wide open and Windows Boxes sealed tighter than a drum, and it's up to the admin. I'm not really sure if there's a test or anything that sysadmins must pass to become licensed sysadmins, but if there isn't (and I'm not talking about certification) there should be one, at least as far as sensitive data like this is concerned.
Also, a real life situation when computer software caused multiple deaths was in the case of the London Ambulance Service, which used a very poorly constructed computer system and was directly linked to 20 or 30 deaths (due to late ambulances) in the few days it was active.