« Spitzer Taking On Spyware | Main | Levine at CircleID on Phish-Proofing URLs in Email »
April 29, 2005
Schneier to ISPs: Clean Up Your Act
Bruce Schneier blasts ISPs for failing to provide secure services from the bully pulpit of InfoSecurity Europe. His argument seems to be that while solutions are available, few ISPs avail themselves of them, while others seem to think that people would be willing to pay for more secure services. As much as I'd like to believe that, I think what's more likely given the degree to which dialup connectivity is commoditized and broadband is monopolized is that the former will compete at the same price for more security-oriented customers and the latter will continue to do nothing. Why should Road Runner offer a secure cable loop in my neighborhood, free of ARP noise and other abusive traffic from worms and the like, if there's no competition? I can't get DSL, or couldn't the last I tried, because of bridge taps (I live in a historic district) and so, like with everything else, I'm responsible for providing my own defenses and security.
We run our own firewall at work, with RFC 1918 addresses behind a public IP NAT; we do our own co-location and manage IP-level blocks with ipchains and iptables rather than relying on our providers' router config and ACLs; we handle it all, because we have to. I'd be irresponsible to do anything else.
Posted by schampeo at April 29, 2005 1:33 PM