Tuesday, March 8, 2011

A “Health Certificate” to Enter the Internet

Imagine this. You start up your computer. You connect to the Internet. But instead of your browser going to the home page, you get a request for a certificate assuring that your computer is clean, and can therefore enter the Internet.
deniedacces 400x245 A Health Certificate to Enter the Internet
Sound unlikely? Anyway, that is one proposal being kicked around by Microsoft at the RSA Conference. It is called the “Global Internet Health model.” The goal is to identify computers that have malware and restrict what they can do on the Internet.
The original model, proposed last year by Microsoft’s Scott Charney was simple, if your computer is infected, you can’t get on the Internet until it is clean.
This year, the approach is a bit more sophisticated. If a device is known to be a danger to the Internet, the user should be notified and the device should be cleaned before it is allowed to have unlimited access to the Internet. This will minimize the risk of the infected device contaminating other devices or otherwise disrupting legitimate Internet activities.
Computer Quarantine 400x292 A Health Certificate to Enter the Internet
Can this work with Current Technology?
Aside from the privacy issues, and the free quest available to the internet which is guaranteed, can this approach work today?
Quite possibly, yes. Try the certificate process for starters. Here, ISP’s would require a certificate of authentication to allow users into the internet. Now expand this to cover PC’s or laptops, and require that they show a certificate of “good health.” That would be a device that does not have malware, that has running virus protection software with the current updates, that current software patches are installed, and one that has a firewall installed and running. With the certificate of “good health” a user could go anywhere, but he would not be a carrier, at least not at the inception of the web surf, with malware.
Source: myce

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