Security threats Toolkit

Story: Government must force ISPs to take security seriously

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Plenty of freeware and Open Source solutions out there that the ISP's can implement for a nickle and a dime.

If it's used as a basic service for all the customers of the ISP in question. Usually the (money) problem is that ISP's want to install such services with options to charge by the byte, the minute, the customer. So the price tag comes from making it an extra, an optional, service. Basic services don't have such problems.

Think for example of a low level anti-spam filter that filters out at least the most obvious of spam for all the customers of the ISP. And given that the ISP has a legal contract of some sort with its customers it should be very easy to get rid of spam sources within their customers install base (eg: by helping granny to cure her zombied PC).

Think for example of making it a basic service to install anti-dDoS filters on their own routers which most router vendors happen to provide for free.

Nothing fancy. Just do something about the Top 10. Once that's done do something about the next Top 10 and so forth. The government could maybe put on some advisories. Consumer protection organizations could perform random tests and print the findings.

The idea being that if enough ISP's would implement such basic services the impact overall will be greater then the sum of its parts. Also because diversity will be build into the total system right from the start because not every ISP will install the exact same solution as the next ISP (so what one doesn't catch the next might etc etc resulting in learning from eachother). And it would save them on their own used bandwidth and transported bytes costs at the same time as well.

And for those ISP's that want to do more for their customers. They could opt for an additional and optional anti-spam+ or whatever service they can charge extra for.

Care should be taken that certain ISP's won't filter out to much (or too little). But as long as customers are free to switch their ISP in such cases most ISP will find the balance that they need. Because if they filter out too much then their customers will switch to an ISP that doesn't filter that much. And if they filter too little (or charge too much) then again their customers will switch to an ISP that is more to their liking. Depanding on the amount of lock-in power such an ISP has over its customers ofcourse.

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