Network World

Security expert and acquaintance Dave Piscitello sent me a note saying that Fred can't take the place of security equipment like spam and virus filters, and perimeter security from firewalls and gateways. That's exactly correct, and I should have made mention of that fact more clearly in the column.

Repeat: Fred supports your existing security system, not replaces it. The biggest value Fred provides is to eliminate any confusion by co-workers. Anything unusual? Send it to Fred.

Dave also mentions that many large companies actively discourage Freds in their organizations. I like to think that working with Fred, even in large companies, will provide more benefits than squelching Fred.

Are you a Fred? Does your company have a Fred? If so, does Fred help?

James

Is this a joke? If so, the humor is lost on me and I can't find the punch line.

"Zero dollar" cost? Fred's time is not paid for - you know how much it costs takes to examine even one person's suspicious email, let alone an entire organization's?

And you go by the email "sender name" to figure out if an attachment can be trusted? In these days of viruses sending out emails using the infected person's address books? If it was so easy to just trust attachments by sender name, you would not need most of the tools in the market today (which together don't even solve the whole problem yet).

And Fred would have to be the all-knowing, fully-privileged guy who knows everyone's bank account info (such as server authentication methods that are being put into place for anti-phishing today) needed to weed out non-phishing emails from suspicious looking emails, and can be trusted with every potentially sensitive attachment that "looks suspicious" (working for zero dollars of course, as such as a privileged position would undoubtedly pay).

This is either a moronic premise for a security system or a sophomoric attempt at a joke.