Actually quite a lot of worms attack 3rd party software (look at the huge hit ISS took last year). If you don't believe me look at Snort signatures list. A typical commercial IDP appliance has between 20000 to 30000 signatures - they all aren't Microsoft ;)
While the applications you use are nice, they are in fact probably giving you a false sense of security, the fact that you get the "rare malware infection" reveals this. It may be better than native ICS, but its far inferior to a good firewall.
In 1999 MS DID NOT DOMINATE THE NETWORKING WORLD, networking and MS have very little to do with each other. MS utilizes networks, but does not make any networking devices, no routers, no switches, no anything related to Networking. They have operating systems that can make use of installed networks.
If you have children, how do they get their homework done? Most schools use Windows-based machines. If you have children, most of the stuff they would use to do their homework would be for MS Windows.
Charles, at home I got rid of microsoft windoze in 1992. At work, several versions may have been installed for evaluation on the test network over the years, but it never got out of the test lab. We don't need it - therefore we don't use it. That means no viruses, no spyware, no worms, no trojans, no problems.
In my previous two replies to you, I quoted you and then asked:
So you actually mean to sit there and tell someone that an O/S that is not MS and written by fallible Human Beings cannot be attacked if the conditions are right? ;-)
How so? We've got something like 1800 systems in this facility, and not one of them is running windoze of any variant. This division is Research and Development, and we also have the corporate routine bean counters. Company wide, there's probably 50 or 60 thousand systems in North America in six facilities, and close to the same number in half dozen other countries in Asia, Europe, and South America. About the only windoze systems I'm aware of are in marketing, and probably corporate legal. Heck, I suspect marketing probably has more Macintosh crap than windoze boxes.
For that matter, the company where my wife works as a tax accountant (regional retailer) doesn't have more than a handful of windoze boxes either, compared to over a thousand boxes running *nix (mainly Linux, but some OpenBSD). They switched because of license costs and security.
What about Windows emulation? Your bean counters will have to have Windows to use the latest accounting, finanancial and spreadsheet software, so I am pretty sure that someone must be using Windows emulation.
Charles, there are many ways that you can emulate Windows file formats, and you can also use MS Office on Linux if you know anything about the non-MS world.
AllegroSurf acts as a NAT, and it is much more secure than ICS, I can tell you that. Combine that with any kind of software firewall, and you have a network that is just as secure as any hardware appliance.
Tell me Charles, was Word Perfect an emulation of MS Word? Was Lotus 123 an emulation of Excel? Why do you think a similar application has to be an emulation of an overpriced microsoft product?
And you still haven't identified this "college" you attended that networking class.
Charles, what is it about the statement above that you can't understand?
Charles, I'm under an NDA, so I don't even mention which variant of Linux or *BSD we are using, much less name the applications we're using, but why do you think that we _have_ to have windoze? Apparently, you know as much about accounting software as you know about networking. And I'd go further and say you don't even know how to use a search engine.
No emulation. No windoze. The most that is needed is windoze file compatibility - and I'd bet even in your nice windoze applications, you even have a 'Save As' function.
Someone recently asked me if we have _any_ microsoft products. I mentioned that at work, we had bought a few of those ergonomic keyboards, but I had not seen them recently, and suspected they were swapped out and may have been surplused. Apparently, that's correct. At home, I have two of the old 'Dove Bar' serial mice, and on the way to the cafeteria (located at the other end of building 35, about 750 feet away) today, I looked in each office - perhaps 150 total, and was able to spot twelve mice that looked like Dove Bars. That's it.
So, what was the name of that college where you learned about networking?
I know the first thing to go were the windoze servers - replaced by boxes running Samba on a GPL version of Linux. Total cost of software? I dunno - but here's a recent price list from one site:
I suspect postage is extra - but they also offer the Sampler pack, with
22 CDs for only $35. Or if you don't feel like paying for CDs, you can legally download all of that for free. That's even cheaper than those Russian wareZ sites where you can buy pirated copies of XP for US$80. These are all unlimited versions, so you could take that Ubuntu 5.04 and install it on ten or twenty thousand systems at no additional cost.
What hastened the conversion after Samba was working was a visit from clowns from the Software Publisher's Association, (probably tipped by a recently fired employee). Before they were escorted off the premises, Dave (the system administrator) took them into the server room, and showed them the eight Samba servers, and explained that he was removing microsoft as fast as he could. I asked my wife last night - and she thinks they have two XP boxes and two or three still running what sounds like NT4.
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