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OS/2 Warp or eComStation opportunity with USAF?
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BigWarpGuy
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View this member's profileSearch all posts from this memberSend an email to this memberhttp://home.comcast.net/~tomleem
posts: 2298
since: 12 Jan, 2001
1. OS/2 Warp or eComStation opportunity with USAF?
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In an article with/from Information Week (an article from an e-mail news letter), it mentions that if MS does not or can not patch the security problems with its/their software, the USAF will consider other software. This could be an opportunity for those company(ies) that make alternative software for/of MS programs.

** Air Force Has A Mission For Microsoft

As if Microsoft didn't have enough trouble with the government.
Now an Air Force CIO is taking the vendor--and its competitors,
too--to task, saying they need to step up their efforts to
establish improved security standards.

Coding errors in commercially developed software account for
roughly 80% of successful system intrusions, says Air Force CIO
John Gilligan. And hacks today may be aimed at causing more than
bottom-line damage. "This is no longer an economic issue. This is
clearly a national-security issue," Gilligan says. The cost and
energy the Air Force is expending on dealing with coding flaws
that are found almost every day, and which could create
opportunities for hackers, is taking its toll. It's "rising very
fast--approaching the point where we're spending more money to
find, patch, and fix vulnerabilities than we paid for the
software," he says.

Microsoft doesn't necessarily have worse design problems than
other vendors the Air Force buys products from, such as Cisco
Systems and Oracle, but it's the largest IT supplier for the Air
Force. So it has "the opportunity to show leadership in the
industry," Gilligan says. Microsoft has helped set the right tone
with chairman Bill Gates' internal memo advocating "trustworthy
computing, [but] the key will be, what's the follow through?"

Gilligan met last fall with Microsoft execs Rick Belluzzo and
Howard Schmidt (now vice chairman of the federal Critical
Infrastructure Protection Board) to discuss mounting security
problems. The Air Force has instituted more rapid processes for
patching, but it's no easy task to manage 400,000 desktops
running Microsoft software. "We're not leaving Microsoft in a
week or six months," Gilligan says. But if the company doesn't
improve, the Air Force, with roughly a $6 billion IT budget, will
weigh other software options, he says. "Even though Microsoft may
have good functionality in products and the purchase price may be
reasonable, the overall life-cycle cost and vulnerability may
cause us to look at other products." - Sandra Swanson

Search for secure computing
Software's Challenge
http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eGOg0BdDXH0V20BVpd0AY

Memo From Bill Gates
http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eGOg0BdDXH0V20BVpf0Aa

TomLeeM

PS (I was not sure of the url but I was able to copy the article and post it here - by giving credit to those who wrote it, I am hoping I will not get in trouble with them - in a way, it is free 'advertisement' for them ).


OS/2 Warp-ed to the very end.
Date: 15 Mar, 2002 on 15:17
OS/2 Warp or eComStation opportunity with USAF?
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