Bruce Schneier Advocates Software Vendor Accountability for Security

Software companies should be made liable for the security problems that arise in their products, according to security guru Bruce Schneier. In a presentation at the LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit, the BT Counterpane CEO said that this was the only way to help improve IT security, the effects of which were currently taken for granted.

By modifying the cost-benefit analysis and giving greater IT security responsibility to software companies through liability assignment, security could eventually be improved, he said. "All I need is for the cost of doing the bad [work] to increase. This is why I favor software liability because it raises the costs of bad software."

The link for this article located at Techworld is no longer available.