Dennis Kennedy

Will we learn any lessons from the latest round of viruses?

The recent round was discouraging for at least two reasons. First, the viruses once again exploited well-publicized security holes for which patches and protection were widely available. Second, the combination of the automatic actions of anti-virus notifications and spam filtering systems greatly amplified the impact of the problem, turning the intended cure into at least as much a problem as the virus itself.

What might be worse is that the virus may well have signaled the quickening of the death spiral of the utility of email. In my case, because of intermittent bouncing of messages to me and instances of spam filters blocking some messages from me, I have no confidence that I received all of the messages I should have or that recipients got the messages I sent. for the last week or so. I spoke with LawTech Guru Jeff Beard today and he mentioned that it feels like we are back in the early days of email when you had to call people up and check to make sure they got your emails.

One piece of good news is that Dann Sheridan has posted an article called "Asleep at the Wheel," that nicely summarizes the issues and, more important, points to some very useful resources.

A quote from the article well worth your consideraqtion: "These things only get bigger each time they hit. What’s it going to take?"