What could have been done differently?

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

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?