[Esd-l] Justifying use of Sanitizer to upper level management

[Matt McNamara]

Here are some additional resources we are using to justify the use of 
the Procmail Sanitizer:

The May 2002 issue of Information Security Magazine's cover story is 
titled "Cyber-Menace: A six-part Information Security Special Report on 
the growing virus problem--and what to do about it".

http://www.infosecuritymag.com/2002/may/cybermenace.shtml

Highlights from the articles:

"The survey group of 300 organizations experienced nearly 1.2 million 
virus encounters on about 650,000 machines during the 20-month survey 
period. In the last two months of the 2001 survey, companies averaged 
103 virus infections per 1,000 machines per month, up 13 percent from 
the 2000 survey"

"Given the increase in incidents, it's not surprising that the majority 
of survey respondents said the virus problem is getting worse. One-third 
of companies (32 percent) said the problem was "much worse," while 40 
percent said it was "somewhat worse." Only 2 percent said it was better."

"Nearly three out of four respondents said viruses caused PC downtime 
and a loss of personnel and machine productivity. More than half said 
viruses corrupted their files, while a third said they lost data as a 
result."


Rise in viruses within emails outpacing growth of email
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/8/18099.html

The Untold Cost of Viruses: Corporate Credibility
http://www.101com.com/solutions/security/article.asp?ArticleID=552

Be Ready to Repel Viruses, Old and New
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19399-2002Apr20.html

Internet to a Crawl: Virus Affects PCs, Tricks Servers and Offers 
Infected Websites for Downloads
http://www.emailtoday.com/emailtoday/pr/nimda_email_virus.htm


I'd also like to know what other arguments anyone has successfully, or 
unsuccessfully used.

-- 
Matt McNamara, CISSP
Information Technology
eMed Technologies Corp.