Neowin.net

Another great reason to get into the civil service :P

The United Kingdom announced late Friday that it has signed up to participate in Microsoft Corp.'s recently announced Government Security Program, which gives it access to Windows source code and prescriptive guidance on security assurance.
Earlier this month Microsoft said it had formed a new global initiative to provide governments around the world with access to Windows source code under the new GSP security initiative, which is designed to "address the unique security requirements of governments and international organizations throughout the world."

"We view governments that utilize our software as trusted partners. The GSP will provide governments with the opportunity to assess the security and integrity of the Microsoft products they deploy. … We are also providing technical documentation, methods for troubleshooting, access to cryptographic tools subject to export controls, and access to Microsoft expert support technicians who can collaborate with governments on how they use this source code access," Microsoft's chief technology officer, Craig Mundie, said at that time. The U.K. government joins the government of Russia and NATO as the first participants in the program, while Microsoft is talking to more than 20 other countries about their interest in the program.

Microsoft's GSP move follows its concerns about the interest a number of foreign governments and agencies have shown in Linux.

View: Article @ eweek

Another analyst firm came up with similar estimates that measured the cost of cleanup rather than of lost productivity. Technology market researcher Computer Economics estimates that the worm cost between $750 million and $1 billion to clean up, said Mark McManus, vice president of technology and research for the Carlsbad, Calif., firm.

"The labor costs, although significant, weren't as bad as Code Red," McManus said. Analysts at Computer Economics had estimated that the LoveLetter virus cost almost a billion dollars in cleanup and more than $7.7 billion in lost productivity.

Many security experts argue, however, that while SQL Slammer is easier to clean up, the worm was worse overall than Code Red--which attacked more servers but didn't affect infrastructure, such as financial systems.

"This worm did something that we have not seen before," said Peter Allor, director of operations for the Information Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center (IT-ISAC). "In this case, the customer was affected," he said. "People weren't getting dial tones, airplanes couldn't fly, ATMs weren't giving cash."

Data on computer viruses has always been lean. Putting a dollar figure on the losses incurred by malicious code is difficult at best, said Michael Gartenberg, research director for Internet industry watcher Jupiter Research.

"It is a billion soft dollars, and that is an important part of an equation," he said, stressing that the losses weren't actually coming out of companies' wallets. "Measuring productivity and translating it into dollars is a hard thing."

In the past, analysts have tried to bill a variety of events to lost productivity. Last May, outplacement service Challenger Gray and Christmas estimated that the first day of "Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones" would cost firms $319 million in lost productivity from workers calling in sick and taking days off. In addition, Internet monitoring software maker Websense estimated in May 2000 that a Webcast by underwear retailer Victoria Secret would cost businesses $120 million in lost productivity.

Mi2g's Matai said there is a big difference between those numbers and the losses incurred by malicious code.

"I don't think we are looking at productivity loss like that at all," he said. "We are looking at how many servers went down, what was the utilization of those servers and what kind of traffic didn't get through," he said. "The administrators could do nothing until they sorted all that mess out. So it is a different measure of productivity loss."