Commentary

While almost all major security products implement a variety of techniques to protect against unknown malware, so called “zero day” attacks have been especially successful in penetrating most security utilities.

(Editor’s Note: The following narrative is about a real patient. I have requested and received permission to tell his story. His name will not be used but he is aware that it may be possible for some who know him to identify who he is. The story will be told from my perspective. He would tell it slightly differently, I suspect, but the facts are accurate and the implications of his story and our relationship are significant for the future of health care. Over the past three years, he and I have become good friends. I have learned to respect and care for him and he for me.

It should be no surprise that smart computing devices are outselling traditional desktop and laptop computers. There is an intensive battle for market share of operating systems for these smart devices, which includes smart phones, tablets and related devices. The primary combatants are Google with its Android operating system, Apple with its iOS, and Microsoft with its newly released Windows 8 version for smart devices.

I am fully cognizant of the level of frustration and anger when a hard drive or other mass storage device fails. While I am personally careful to keep contemporary backups of all of the critical data on all of my computers, all too often I receive calls of despair from individuals whose computer “crashed” and they are convinced that they have lost all of their important information. In some cases the alleged “crash” is not really a catastrophic hard drive failure, but a recoverable error or problem due to either hardware or software issues.