Microsoft should upgrade its security posture: Gartner

BANGALORE: Market research firm GartnerGroup has sent a strong recommendation

to Microsoft that the latter should "upgrade the security posture of its

products" in order to avoid incidences of virus attacks such as the ‘I

Love You’, which spread across the Net into millions of computers.

A Gartner release said that the ILOVEYOU virus was not only a warning bell to

CIOs and security officers in enterprises, but, more importantly, it was a

strong affirmation that Microsoft should upgrade the security posture of its

products. Gartner considers that security posture to be too permissive today, it

added.

The ILOVEYOU virus, which spread rapidly throughout the world this morning,

is a derivative of the Melissa virus and affects only Microsoft e-mail systems.

Listing the standard security measures, Gartner's chief technology officer and

chief information security officer, Michael Zboray said that enterprises should

have a security response team in place. "Block all Internet e-mail until

the virus fix is applied. Have communications and security response team

procedures in place. Each hour counts in identifying and stopping viruses and

hackers. Early detection and communication are vital. Enterprisewide e-mails and

warnings about the event rapidly restore an infrastructure to a secure state.

Enterprises must have specific responses mapped to either virus or hacker

attacks, he suggested.

Mr Zboray further said that organisations should connect the security

response team with the rest of the IT department. "When the security

response team is in place and reports directly to the CIO or chief security

officer, other IT teams that maintain the supply chain and customer relationship

management systems can be updated immediately about any impact to vendors and

customers," he added.