inventory software programs

A reactive approach to inventory software programs is to reverse-engineer the worm and set up intrusion-detection mechanisms or ACLs to limit its propagation. However, the increased sophistication and complexity of today's worms make them harder to identify from legitimate traffic flows. This exacerbates the finite time lag between when a worm begins to propagate and when the following occurs

These time lags might not seem long in absolute terms, such as in minutes, but the relative window of opportunity for damage is huge. For example, in 2003, the number of hosts infected with the Slammer worm (a Sapphire worm variant) doubled every 8.5 seconds on average, infecting more than 75,000 hosts in just 11 minutes and performing scans of 55 million more inventory software programs within the same time period