ISPs' willingness to take action

Mon Oct 27 16:16:06 UTC 2003

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, Joe Abley wrote:
> > Most ISPs are relatively secure.  Yes, occasionally a backbone
> > router shows up on some list with a password of "cisco."  The major
> > problems are in the systems managed and installed on non-ISP networks
> > (i.e. end-users).
>
> Maybe all the ISPs I've been involved with in the past ten years have
> been exceptions, but there are only a small handful of them that I
> would elevate to the status of "relatively secure".

That's why I said relative.  I didn't say they were very secure or had
great security.  But when out-running the bear you don't have to be
faster than the bear, just faster than than the other guy.

If you compared the "average" ISP security with the "average" end-user
security, relatively speaking which would be more secure?

Of course, we all have some relatives we'd prefer not to invite to holiday
dinner.

> My experience every time is that end users are amazingly tolerant of
> breakage. The fact that there are popups all over the screen, or that
> it takes five minutes to open their mail client, or that machines
> freeze up every ten minutes and require a hard boot appear to be simply
> accommodated as "that's what computers do".

They are amazingly toloerant of "that's what computers do."  They are
amazingly intolorant when someone else "breaks" it.