Internet security shouldn't cost extra
TheStar.com - Internet security shouldn't cost extra
TYLER HAMILTON
If you subscribe to Bell Sympatico High Speed, you probably know by now that Sympatico.ca has merged with MSN.ca to become a "super" portal, the result of a year-long alliance between Bell Canada and Microsoft Corp.
Anybody with Internet access can surf the new Sympatico.MSN.ca portal. It's part of a new content war with Rogers Cable, which has partnered up with Web giant Yahoo Inc. to launch its own co-branded, high-speed portal later this year.
If you're an existing Sympatico high-speed customer, you can choose to pay an additional $4.95 monthly for a "premium" version of the MSN service that offers enhanced security, as well as better e-mail and digital photo management.
When Bell launched the new portal last week, what caught my attention most were the security promises. While the basic free version of Sympatico.MSN.ca, the one anybody can access, will scan incoming e-mail for spam and viruses — nothing new, here — the premium version goes a step further, promising "persistent protection" of desktop computers.
In other words, the service includes a firewall that can stop intruders from accessing your PC or laptop, as well as desktop anti-virus software that is regularly updated. Montreal-based Zero Knowledge Systems Inc. is supplying the software for the security features, as it also does for Telus Corp. out west, Vidéotron Ltée. in Quebec, and Aliant Inc. in the east.
Spam and virus attacks over the past year have clearly shown that it's in Bell's best interest to make sure customer computers are protected against viruses. It's also important for the computers to have a way to get rid of viruses — worms, Trojan horses and other malicious programs — that have managed to permeate outer defences.
The reasons are many. Recent Internet worm outbreaks have left Trojan horses on Sympatico-connected PCs, allowing outsiders to remotely take control of the computers and turn them into spam machines. When activated, these machines quietly send out millions of junk e-mails across the Sympatico network, as well as the general Internet, ultimately jamming up the e-mail servers of other ISPs and corporations.
This makes other ISPs unhappy, not to mention Bell's corporate customers, who want a network that isn't periodically gummed up by spam and other e-mail containing damaging viruses.
It's why, according to feedback from some Star readers, AOL has started to bounce back some e-mail messages that originate from Sympatico accounts.
It's also why Bell has been forced to suspend the e-mail accounts of hundreds of Sympatico customers so far this year, all customers who have had their computers compromised and turned into silent spam machines. Of course, none of this is without cost. Bell spends millions of dollars each year trying to protect and clean up its network, educate customers and handle security-related complaints.
This isn't isolated to Bell. A frequently quoted study released earlier this year by Waterloo-based Sandvine Inc. found that worm attacks on residential broadband subscribers alone cost North American service providers $245 million annually.
But Bell is the largest target in Canada, and to restore confidence to residential and business customers, it needs to put a bigger effort into online security. Computer vulnerability to viruses is often blamed on Microsoft, but it's Bell, not the software giant, that must handle customer complaints and deal with chaos on its network.
So why charge $4.95 for a premium service that touts security as its biggest feature when it's in Bell's larger interest that people be secure? Why, in general, do Internet service providers continue to view security as a cost that should be passed along to customers, when they know many customers simply won't pay?
Put another way, when are ISPs going to start seeing security — on the network and on network-connected PCs — as a cost of doing business that's built into the price of a monthly subscription and where use of freely provided anti-virus and firewall software is a condition of service?
"It's something that is being considered right now," admitted Pierre Blouin, group president of consumer markets for Bell Canada.
It's encouraging to know that they're at least thinking about it.
It's no secret that the personal firewall and anti-virus market — dominated by Symantec Corp. and Network Associates Inc. — is going to eventually disappear. Microsoft has already hinted that these plain vanilla security features will over time become absorbed into that big sponge called the Windows operating system, and Symantec and Network Associates are preparing for that day by looking upstream to the corporate security market.
In the meantime, security continues to be sold as a voluntary service separate from the cost of basic high-speed access. My advice: Bell, Telus and Aliant, which already promote the Zero Knowledge security software, should split the cost of buying and funding the operation of Zero Knowledge.
A larger North American telco alliance could even be formed, splitting the costs even further. A good candidate for recruitment is the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, a coalition of two-dozen ISPs — including Bell and Telus — formed last year to combat spam and viruses.
In return for what would be a relatively minuscule investment for these Internet giants — less, anyway, than the annual cost of putting out security fires — all alliance members would be able to integrate Zero Knowledge's security software into their high-speed offerings at no additional cost to residential and small business customers.
If customers already have or prefer to use a competing security provider, they would have to prove they have it and agree to maintain such security as a condition of high-speed activation.
Call it a crazy idea. Maybe it is. But something has to be done, and sometimes crazy fits the bill. Whatever the approach, the tendency of large Internet service providers to shift the security burden and cost on to customers won't fly when you need virtually 100 per cent participation.
It's time for the industry to be more proactive, and to take a small financial hit for a substantial long-term gain.
June 14, 2004 at 07:58 AM in Portals | Permalink
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