The computing industry has, as of yet, to take this step. Consider the security hole found in Microsoft's FrontPage webserver software. This software product was in direct competition with Netscape Communication's webserver.
They released this software in 1997. Many companies used this software to serve their web pages for years. Many ISP's and major corporations are still using this software. The software designers intentionally placed a backdoor into the webserver. The password for the back door was, no less, ``Netscape engineers are weenies.'' More importantly, the backdoor was discovered in April of 2000, over three years after the release of the software product.
There are three elements for alarm in this incident. Firstly, the software engineers of this product, for whatever the reason, thought nothing of the major implications of a backdoor as a security hole to a publicly accessible webserver. Secondly, the nature of the production of software, closed source, meant that this backdoor would be able to exist for long periods of time. Lastly, the speed at which the company needed to release the software product to remain competitive, cost the scrutiny of the software product.
Microsoft, to this day, will not admit that there is, indeed, a backdoor. But ironically enough, they have published a webpage stating how to remove this non-existent backdoor. I will examine these elements after the following juxtaposed case study.