Computer & Network Security - How about this new approach?

You recommend a global register of who and what computers can and cant get on the internet, use email etc etc?

Can you say every hackers dream target?

Can you imagine the chaos when it goes belly up for even a few minutes?

Can you imagine how often they will be sued for business interuption when a cock up is made?

etc etc etc...

Basically we are stuck with viruses as long as we want to use computers that are totally configurable to do basically anything instead of fixed application 'appliances'. Either that or we take the step from computers being able to do what they like until being told its wrong (ie a virus definition comes out)to not doing anything till they are told its okay (ie a program definition).

On top of that courts should start handing down sentances comensurate with the damage that viruses cause. 1,000,000 infections at 1 hour each to fix is 1 million man hours. Lets value that time at say ?50 per hour... and ask ourselves how many people that have caused ?50 million worth of damage or loss while committing any other crime would expect to get a sentance of anything less than 20 years?

Start locking the gimps up I say - and for LONG periods.