The lessons of Sasser

Three weeks before the Sasser worm began to slither across the Internet, Microsoft published a patch to block the hole the worm uses to tunnel inside computers. Nevertheless, the worm grounded at least 40 Delta Air Lines flights and delayed many more. The U.K. Coastguard was figuratively run aground and was completely offline for most of a day. So what happened? We had the tools to stop the worm dead in its tracks, but it still exacted a high toll in lost productivity, loss of real business and, in the case of the sailors at sea around the coast of England, created a real risk to life.

The root cause for this dysfunction can't be assigned to the lack of tools. We need to look deeper at the factors that contribute to the operational environment within IT. This is where we might begin to understand why so many companies were left naked to the Sasser worm.

I think the most useful analogy comes in the form of a classic Greek myth. Sisyphus offends the ancient Greek gods, and he is condemned to forever roll a heavy rock up a hill, watching it roll down again and then rolling the rock back up the hill again.

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