Should there be a Vulnerablity Tax On Buggy Software?

Rice blames the software industry for a litany of hidden costs, ranging from the infrastructure needed to fix hackable bugs in software to recent data breaches at the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon--even a Boeing 747 crash in 2005 that resulted from software glitches. All told, he places the total economic cost of security flaws in software at around $180 billion a year.

Rice's controversial solution? Create a tax on software based on the number and severity of its security bugs. Even if that means passing those costs to consumers, Rice, an instructor at the SANS Institute and a former cryptographer for the NSA and the Navy, believes that a tax is the only way to push the software industry to mend its buggy ways. Forbes.com spoke with Rice about his idea of a "vulnerability tax" and his accounting for the hidden costs of cybercrime.