I killed an hour or so this morning removing a piece of malware from my computer which I received from going to a headline site at memeorandum. Verbum sap.
My system is protected to the 9’s but I still came close to getting something. There was no real infection: it just corrupted my Firefox settings a bit.
The penalties and law enforcement measures taken to prevent this kind of stuff are ridiculously, woefully inadequate. My back-of-the-envelope calculation of the total value of the system security business is that it’s in the vicinity of a $100 billion per year industry. The irony is that it’s an industry that shouldn’t need to exist at all, at least not at that scale. When you add the administrative costs of this sort of nonsense, you’re beginning to talk about real jack.
Add to the expenses for system security the measures forced under Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations and it’s a wonder that businesses get anything accomplished at all.
