Bottom-Up Solutions

You may have noticed that practically every ISP is rolling out their own (branded) anti-virus solution. The same goes with spyware and even anti-spam measures. Even with all of this, there’s still problems with all of the above.

These are prime examples of the failure of top-down solutions. To achieve a truly effective and near-universal solution, it must come from the bottom (users/consumers) upward. When the costs – in the economic sense, so that “costs” includes the “cost” of remembering to update your virii definitions – are passed onto someone else, there’s no reason to bother taking care of it yourself.

Or – and this is the more troubling part – to bother to understand what’s going on.

Keep this in mind when you’re crafting your policy solution:  the people involved must be informed and they must have a reason to care.  If you fail to give them those things, don’t be surprised when they don’t succeed.