Bruce Satow wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> Thank you for the reply. I agree that it would be more convenient for
> a systems administrator to utilize centrally managed Symantec software
> for the majority of campus computers, and yes it would be more
> convenient for the user who doesn't wish to bother with such things.
> As I have mentioned before, I am not against the distribution and
> utilization of the "custom" Symantec software.
>
> However, to make things clear, the unmanaged version of the SAV is
> easily configured to automatically update software from Symantec
> directly. Automatic updates and downloads can be set on a daily basis
> and at whatever time of day the user wishes.
> Extracting SAV from the SCS Admin CD is easily done. It is not a lot
> of work However downloading the entire CD from campus is time consuming.
>
> Regardless of whether one encourages departments and individuals to
> use the 'Custom' version or not, this should not mean that the
> download availability of either one should be made more difficult than
> another.
> In other words, when encouraging everyone to use "ver. b", the
> availability and distribution of "ver. a" should not be made more
> difficult. If such distribution bias does occur, then it does raise
> the question of intent - why are you forcing me to use "ver. b" by
> making it more difficult to utilize "ver. a"?
>
> Defense in depth would not allow a single point of failure due to
> software bugs and vulnerabilities. If everyone were forced to use the
> same managed version in May 2006, there would be much more damage and
> on the wider scale.
> Even with the upgrade warning, I bet that many people made the
> assumption that since their Symantec software was being externally
> managed, everything will be taken care of automatically.
>
>
Bruce,
I am glad that it is easy to configure the unmanaged version of the
software. Hopefully, you won't have to download the entire CD from
software.berkeley.edu that often.
You bring up a good point about encouraging folks to use a certain
version. If all things were equal, I would agree that we should
distribute all versions for all operating systems for both their 32 and
64 bit versions. The problem is that the number of distinct installers
that we have to maintain grows quickly if we do that. It is difficult
to produce, test and maintain lots of versions. At the same time, I
don't want to prevent anyone from being able to run a non-customized
version of the Symantec software. We don't have a perfect solution, but
unless I there is sufficient demand I would like to continue to focus on
just providing pre-configured installers for the UCB Custom version.
It was not my intent to suggest that just using the managed version of
the Symantec client was in any way defense in depth. If everyone relied
on the same managed version of the Symantec client as the sole
protection for his or her system, then you are correct, the potential
for wide-scale damage is greater.
Michael
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Received on Thu Dec 13 2007 - 17:04:12 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Thu Dec 13 2007 - 17:04:12 PST