At a Berlin security conference, Microsoft executive Scott Charney suggested a "Collective Defensive" strategy for the Internet modeled after public health policies.
Scott
Charney, Microsoft's corporate vice president of trustworthy computing, is
advocating that governments enact legislation that would isolate computers from
the public Internet if they aren't adequately protected by the latest security
technology.
Speaking
at the International Security Solutions Europe (ISSE) Conference, in Berlin,
Charney said governments should establish computer security policies modeled
after public health measures that isolate people who are exposed to infectious
diseases. His keynote at the conference was based on his paper
"Collective
Defense: Applying Public Health Models to the Internet."
The
ISSE is the largest independent IT
security and identity conference in Europe, according to
the organization's Web site.
Charney
wrote that collective cyber defenses are often unsuccessful because consumers'
machines are not checked often enough for infections. "Whereas enterprises
typically have a CIO and CSO to help them
manage the threats they face, there is no equivalent for consumers worldwide,
or even at the national level for most countries," Charney said in his
keynote address.
To
address cyber threats and botnets and tighten Internet security, Charney
recommends that governments adopt legislation and policies based on this public
health model. Like requiring students to get vaccinations before being admitted
into universities and ordering food service workers to wash their hands before
preparing meals in restaurants, similar steps should be taken by the
government, IT industry and ISPs to ensure that consumer devices are bug-free
before connecting to a network.
Consumer
devices need to be isolated just as they would be under the firewall of a
corporate network. "Just as when an individual who is not vaccinated puts
others' health at risk, computers that are not protected or have been
compromised with a bot put others at risk and pose a greater threat to
society," Charney wrote in an
Oct.
5 blog post.
"For
a society to be healthy, its members must be aware of basic health risks and be
educated on how to avoid them," he explained.
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