Is the "Vulnerability Tax" the Key to 100 Percent Protected Users?

We all know that a single vulnerability discovered in one of the applications installed on the computer can allow a potential hacker to obtain full control over our system. The software companies cannot be blamed for these holes, as they usually patch them pretty fast, but is there any chance to use a 100 percent secure application that wouldn't put the users at risk? David Rice, director of the Monterey Group, thinks it may be one. According to "Dark Reading", David Rice, who recently rolled out a book called "Geekconomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software", promotes the idea of 'vulnerability tax', which states that software companies should pay a penalty for every new security glitch discovered in their utilities.

Moreover, Mr. Rice reveals that the annual costs of the buggy software technologies are about $180 million. Imagine that users pay this impressive amount of money for applications that could enhance the attackers' attempts to exploit their computers, instead of protecting the systems of this kind from malicious activities.

Getting back to the 'vulnerability tax', do you think it may represent a solution? Just think a while: the main consequence of such a tax would be a bigger software price, but with less glitches, since the software companies would have to get more focused on the security of their tools. But this is not necessarily a problem, Mr. Rice believes. "Right now, people don't feel the social cost of insecure software. That's what this model tries to do," he told "Dark Reading".

"Those software manufacturers would pay less tax pass on less expense to the consumer, just as a regular manufacturing company would pass on less carbon tax to their customers", he continued.

Right now, there are numerous software vulnerabilities that could enable an attacker to invade a system and get control over it. For example, security company Secunia reported, yesterday, no less than 18 security flaws in all kinds of applications.