On Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:06:25 BST, Guillaume FORTAINE said:
you make an informed security decision. Cisco should examine its patching schedule in light of the September 24th announcement; every six months is not acceptable.
but then,,,
3) Testing, Testing, Testing
In this case we have a great example of why every network device needs to be realistically tested under a variety of scenarios, both security and performance driven.
Cognitive dissonance, anybody? :) To paraphrase the old saying - frequent, well-tested, cheap - pick any two. Sure - Cisco *could* release well-tested patch kits once a month, but it's going to cost you. Remember that Microsoft can amortize the cost of its QA labs across several hundred million customers, so each one only has to pay a few dollars. Cisco has to split that cost across a few thousand customers - each customer's share of the bill is going to be higher. You want it once a month rather than once very six months, and just as well tested? It's going to cost *at least* six times as much. Probably more. So - just how much bigger a check you want to write to Cisco for support (whether it's a yearly contract, or bundled into the unit's purchase price)?