Op-Ed: Who's to Blame when Your Computer Dies?

Think your IT department is to blame when your laptop at work acts up? You'd be wrong. The chances are it is the fault of the user. Yes, that would be you. Case in point? Houston's Municipal Courthouse is closed today because of a computer virus.

Today the Houston Municipal Courthouse is closed because of a virus that infected hundreds of city computers. Staff began to notice the problems last week. The virus was isolated to 475 of the city's 16,000 computers. In other words the IT department's nightmare. People assume that passwords, keys, firewalls, locks on computer room doors and other systems-related tools will stop everything that can attack their computers. Sorry Charlie, while those stop gates do a decent job complete protection requires some basic common sense. That kind of thing tends at times to be missing if you are a member of the human race. So want to have a fab machine that is almost perfectly secure? First step keep the darn thing with you. Leaving your laptop open while you go get another donut at the coffee shop is quicker than taking it with you. That's what some naughty people yearn for. Walk away from your machine and you may just come back with a problem. Are you ready to risk it? Your company is doing some nifty stuff. You want to read about it right now, even though everyone in close proximity can see it when you bring it up on your screen. You've just given Eaves-dropper Evie a scoop to give her company. Her boss loves you now. You're the parent of the year! You always let your kids put their discs in your machine. Come on what kind of virus could a teen have on a disc anyway? E-mail Eddy needs to borrow your machine just for a sec to scan her mail. She kinda forgot to let you know that she opened up a Bot Attack but hey that's what your firewall is for anyway. Right? Cross your fingers and watch your computer die. Come to think about it, Average Annie is not at fault at all. It's got to be the IT guy that is growling in the corner trying to fix her machine.