So this troll disguised as a story emerged this week:
http://www.bit9.com/news-events/press-release-details.php?id=102
I presume this is one of those "hey look at me" sort of press releases, where they hope by saying something that's borderline crazy, it will get them more attention.
It's working.
So these people put together a list of
‘The Dirty Dozen’ - 2008’s Most Popular Applications with Critical Security Vulnerabilities.
But then they list their criteria, which are a number of silly thing, but the one that sticks out is this:
The application cannot be automatically and centrally updated via free Enterprise tools such as Microsoft SMS & WSUS.
So their list should really be called:
2008's Most Popular Products that work better than the crap Microsoft ships.
As part of their press release they list the top 5:
- Mozilla Firefox, versions 2.x and 3.x
- Adobe Acrobat, versions 8.1.2 and 8.1.1
- Microsoft Windows Live (MSN) Messenger, versions 4.7 and 5.1
- Apple iTunes, versions 3.2 and 3.1.2
- Skype, version 3.5.0.248
Well, except one of them is a Microsoft product, so my name is a little inaccurate.
I would be surprised to see an organisation that doesn't use Adobe Acrobat. I suspect Adobe Flash Player is also on the list somewhere.
You could probably put up an argument that iTunes and Skype don't belong on a corporate network. Firefox is my browser of choice, and I don't know many people who think IE is better. If it increases employee productivity, it's a good thing.
This sounds to me like Bit9's selling point is that if you're using broken tools that can't properly manage a robust IT infrastructure, don't get tools that work, let them help you minimise worker productivity and increase IT costs (by buying their tool) at the same time!
