ONE in A HUNDRED reported bugs exploited, says Cisco

This is a bit misleading so how many breaches are caused by exploits of unpatched known vulnerabilities? It cuts both ways. Patching is the simplest and most effective way of mitigating being breached or compromised and it can be easily automated and managed for a majority of systems for lower cost than anti virus which isn't working anyway. Don't believe me than ask the Australian Signals Directorate. Their 'Top 4 Mitigation Strategies' which are:

1.Application Whitelisting;

2.Patch Applications;

3.Patch Operating System;

4.Minimise Administrative Privileges.

My Annual Report on Cisco

Well my annual report on Cisco goes something like this... Sell kit that's always full of bugs, so you keep paying for support to get software updates to fix the things that supposedly should have worked in the first place. It's the same report as last year, and the last 10 years before that.

Not that I'm bitter at having wasted most of this week dealing with an interoperability issue between minor release versions of iOS.

Super, which one?

Once I've patched that one, I can relax, right?

I often

Have to use unpatched browsers and old java versions to work on Cisco kit because it doesnt work otherwise.

Who remembers the Cisco PIX requiring a very specific version of Java? Any older? Wont load. Any newer? Wont work properly.

Its still the same now for some of their kit.

I know I know I should use a console cable...but I cant always go to the datacentre.

The same applies to other companies mind you...im not just picking on Cisco.

"So in 90 per cent of IE transactions, there would be some level of insecurity"

The (obviously) prevalent idea that patched=secure is spherical and plural, and always has been. It makes no more sense than "what you don't know can't hurt you" - indeed it's grounded in that false premise.

It's about time we stopped relying on reactive fixes based on blacklisting and got round to creating some real resilience - starting with the ability to write software that isn't littered with exploitable bugs.