That's what makes these attacks so insidious. Anderson's college was immune from the attack because it relies on a Macintosh system. But even though he agrees that greater diversity would make it more difficult for these viruses to spread, he's not sure monocultures are entirely a bad thing. For example, because so many customers use Microsoft programs, one fix, called a patch, will shut down the problem. The Microsoft monoculture also gives companies the economic savings of standardization, said Frank Prince, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass., marketing firm specializing in Internet commerce.
Most organizations get their economies of scale from driving toward standardization.
And the savings from that standardization far outweigh the costs of these occasional attacks. So a rough form of technological diversity already exists across the vast expanse of the company, one that a smaller business can't duplicate. A Microsoft spokeswoman pointed out that Outlook provides security features that may stop a user from downloading a virus. For instance, a customer who attempts to open up an e-mail attatchment will receive a warning first. Customers may also download a more comprehensive warning feature from Microsoft's Office Web site.