> The vast majority of companies won't implement a security policy that strict Maybe such policy should be the default; by default the employee should be able

> The vast majority of companies won't implement a security policy that strict Maybe such policy should be the default; by default the employee should be able to run only applications installed (or approved) by their sysadmin, and applications are sandboxed like Android's ones. In 80s when DOS was developed, there were no easy access to the Internet, no phishing letters and viruses, so there were no risk in running different executables. But today this outdated security model simply doesn't work. You allow employees to download and run executables and they open "yearly-report.doc.exe". Maybe desktop system developers should look at iPhones and Androids. It is difficult to dowload and run a virus on an iPhone; and it doesn't require the user to deal with configuration settings - it works out of the box. Something similar could be done for desktop systems: a pre-approved catalog of known "good" software and a simple UI (that doesn't require special skills) to whitelist any other software. Also, I think that applications and documents should look different; today you can assign an icon of Word document to an executable; running an executable is indistinguishable from opening a document; that's wrong. Maybe applications should be located only in special application directory and run from there.