The Security Mentor

Why do we live in a world where a new PC will catch a virus before you can finish downloading all the patches to protect it? I mean, that's like having your car blow up when you try to drive to the dealer for a recall.

The world's been changing too fast for technology to keep up. That's part of the problem. All the fundamental assumptions built into Windows are for a PC that's sitting by itself or maybe connected to a small friendly network. Your PC is like someone from a small town where nobody locks their doors, walking through bad neighborhoods in a big city. Microsoft is working on removing those assumptions, but changing your assumptions is the hardest kind of engineering work.

Windows is a big target for bad people. That's another part of the problem. Windows is big in two different ways. There are a lot of Windows machines. Microsoft points to the popularity of Windows as the reason bad guys attack it. It's also big in the sense that any Windows machine offers lots of ways to attack it.

No matter what operating system you run, there's something else going on. When computers were new, a machine less powerful than your cellphone would have had a team of experts running it. Today you've got an awesomely versatile and powerful computer on your desk and you're the only one taking care of it. Notice how the security bulletins always talk about problems with software you've never heard of? There's more running on a PC today than most people can keep track of.