[WEB4LIB] Two interesting articles dealing with viruses and IE/Outlook

[Thomas Dowling]

----- Original Message -----
From: <treed at clearwater-fl.com>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 9:54 AM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Two interesting articles dealing with viruses and
IE/Outlook


> Greetings all,
>
> Thought these would be worth sharing.
>
> 1)
>
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2814683,00.htm
l
> "Ban Outlook - Now" by Steven Vaughan-Nichols.
>
> 2)
>
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20011003/tc/the_trouble_with_internet_expl
or
> er_and_how_to_handle_it__1.html
>
> "The Trouble with Internet Explorer (and how to handle it)" by Robert
> Vamosi.
>
> Both articles are a little heavy-handed but make very good points.


To these, add the Gartner Group's recent lambasting of IIS, at
<http://www3.gartner.com/resources/101000/101034/101034.pdf>.

It reads in part, "Gartner recommends that enterprises hit by both Code
Red and Nimda immediately investigate alternatives to IIS, including
moving Web applications to Web server software from other vendors, such as
iPlanet and Apache...Gartner remains concerned that viruses and worms will
continue to attack IIS until Microsoft has released a completely
rewritten, thoroughly and publicly tested, new release of IIS."

I feel compelled to point out that well over a third of all library web
sites run on IIS.

It's time for a heavy-handed response to Microsoft's "features now,
security later (if at all)" policy.  It's also time to go to our IIS
administrators and get them to say exactly what strategic advantage makes
it worthwhile to run such a vulnerable system compared to Apache (or
IPlanet, etc.).  They can sit down next to the guy who foisted Outlook on
everyone and figure out their migration paths.

Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu