July 31, 2007

Should ISPs Be Compelled To Identify & Stop Botnets?

Ryan Naraine questions if Trend Micro's SecureCloud, a Botnet Identification Service for ISPs, will make a difference.

While it does help businesses, and particularly ISPs, to deal with the out-of-control botnet scourge, there’s a feeling that many service providers can’t be bothered to spend money on botnet mitigation for end users.

Last October, while writing a cover piece for eWEEK on the battle to cope with botnet-related crime, I got the feeling from talking to those in the trenches that this battle is already lost — mostly because the smaller ISPs see no ROI associated with mitigating bot-infected machines.

Worse, even if an end user machine is cleaned of bots or removed from a particular botnet, they are routinely reinfected or moved to join a different zombie army.

If ISPs have no interest in properly detecting and preventing botnets is there a need for government regulations requiring this?

Posted in Tech News by #!/usr/bin/geek at 2007-07-31 00:16 ET (GMT-5)

Tags: computersecurity coporatesecurity datasecurity hacker hackers hacking