In implementing security it seems our support personnel sometimes fail to adequately consider the impact on users. It may be time to givemore weight to balancing security concerns with maintaining high levels of service to the user. Users can be as impeded by continuing degradation of their system due to ill considered protective decisions, as by actual viruses. Poorly implemented protective mechanisms may degrade a system's performance continuosly, while an occasional virus that slips through may wreak short intensive damage. Both can be very costly. But we should't automatically put all protective measures possible inplace -- it can tie operations into knots.

As examples, I find I wait -- or get balky response -- when antivirus and spy detection software runs. Protection software loaded into active memory sometimes seems associated with "out of memory" messages. I've experienced continuing difficulty reading our Microsoft Help screens. When I select help, I receive system messages that they are considered a peril by our our security system (Active x controls?), and Microsoft help files are displayed with much degraded, difficult to read print. I also do not receive images forwarded in messages because of our security settings.

I suspect other users have similar experiences -- perhaps reflecting minimal attention by computer systems managers to "cost" (time, missing information, quality, productivity) impact on the "customer", whom we are trying to protect.