Re: Oracle and Arcserve

"Howard J. Rogers" <hjr_at_dizwell.com> wrote in message news:<40abfed7$0$3035$afc38c87_at_news.optusnet.com.au>...
> Joel Garry wrote:
> > "Howard J. Rogers" <hjr_at_dizwell.com> wrote in message news:<40ab5429$0$31680$afc38c87_at_news.optusnet.com.au>...
> >
> >>Bear in mind, Norton Autoprotect is really designed to run on desktop
> >>PCs where users are forever receiving email and loading documents and
> >>executables from unknown sources. In that 'constant use' situation, a
> >>'constant protection agent' is a good idea. But a server is not, one
> >>hopes, receiving and opening email attachments all the time, or forever
> >>having new software from dubious sources installed on it. It probably
> >>lives behind a firewall, too. Of course, a periodic -but manual- running
> >>of an antivirus scanning program might not be a bad idea in a
> >>maintenance moment if you have one. But continual monitoring is not a
> >>good idea for a production system, I think.
> >
> >
> > Have to totally disagree.
>
> With what? I didn't say "no AV". I said "no continuous AV, but periodic
> manual scans".
>
> I don't know whether your comments therefore still apply.

Well, unless by periodic manual scans you mean you have someone sitting at every server 24/7 manually scanning, you must have missed the point. .doc viruses are trivial to create and defend, but infrastructure attacks are not, and are much more dangerous. Anything less than continuous monitoring inevitably leads to downtime. And there is still a problem even with companies dedicated to watching such attacks propagate and stopping them. Unix is certainly not immune to such things, but there are large economic, social and political incentives to go after Windows servers, ie, spammers harvesting, criminals blackmailing, and who knows what political motivations. And some of the worst attacks have been kids trying to implement the long-discredited notion of a "good virus" that removes the "bad virus."

Sit down with a network admin sometime and count the knocks on your door.

jg

--
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http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/%7Ertm/papers/117.pdf