On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, The New York Times wrote:
A spokesman for Microsoft, Rick Miller, confirmed that a number of the company's machines had gone unpatched, and that Microsoft Network services, like many others on the Internet, experienced a significant slowdown. "We, like the rest of the industry, struggle to get 100 percent compliance with our patch management," he said.
Many different companies were hit hard by the Slammer worm, some with better than average reputations for security awareness. They bought finest firewalls, they had two-factor biometric locks on their data centers, they installed anti-virus software, they paid for SAS70 audits by the premier auditors, they hired the best managed security consulting firms. Yet, they still were hit. Its not as simple as don't use microsoft, because worms have hit other popular platforms too. Are there practical answers that actually work in the real world with real users and real business needs?