Enlightening university administrators?

Posted by mintchocicecream on Sun, 12/16/2007 - 22:59Community Marketing Projects

Loughborough University Computing Service recently (November 2007) put out a notice warning about "serious vulnerabilities" with the Firefox browser, and suggest using Internet Explorer instead.

It seems very misleading talking about "serious vulnerabilities" without specifying what they are - and surely, rather than asking users to switch to Internet Explorer (and losing the many benefits of Firefox such as better integration with academic reference tools e.g. Zotero), it would be better to give users a choice by offering two supported platforms?

Any suggestions about enlightening university administrators?

Link: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/computing/news/firefox-0711.html

Full text:
"Are you using Firefox as your browser? Do you really like tabbed browsing?

Tabbed browsing will be available to all Staff Desktop computers from Monday 3rd December 2007, as Internet Explorer 7 will be released as an optional application, with full central support and centrally managed security - one less thing to worry about!

If you wish to continue using Firefox, please note that serious vulnerabilities have been recently reported. We strongly recommend you "Check for Updates" on the help menu, and make sure you are running the latest Firefox Mozilla version: 2.0.0.10.

Computing Services will continue to provide advice on Firefox and other products we know are in use around the University on a best efforts basis, but if you would prefer to avoid the hassle of securing risky software on your own workstation, possibly risking the integrity of your own data, then we would advise you to run with fully supported software on the staff desktop service. From Monday, Internet Explorer 7 will be a fully supported Web browser.

Regards,
Computing Services"


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Shiesh...
Submitted by JustZisGuy on Mon, 12/17/2007 - 00:16.

Off the top of my head one way to approach it would be to just wait until Firefox 3 comes out and have an extra big marketing campaign (fliers, posters, free CD, etc), perhaps with extra emphasis on how Firefox 3 is "more" secure. (Its an entirely new version so it must be more secure than Firefox 2, right? :P )

Of course a kind letter to whoever maintains the news page might get them to retract or edit the linked news item. I haven't been following the security issues too closely but I dare say both browsers have their fare share of security issues these days. Problem is MS with all their closed development can keep a tight lid on even the most hideous of issues.

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