Article: Stakes are High for Vista Security
Shawn
than many people realize. Sure, it's a new operating system and it
needs to fight its own fight for market share, but I think we're
probably all pretty realistic about the inevitable outcome in that
fight. What's at stake is a new way of thinking about security at
Microsoft.
Many of us no doubt remember Chairman Bill's now infamous 2002 memo to
all Microsoft employees in which he put product security as the top
priority for the company. Indeed, he went so far as to tell them that
security concerns would trump new features in software products.
That's a significant and bold statement for any software development
company and it is to be applauded. Great stuff, Bill!
But here it is 2007 and what has really changed? We saw some
significant security advances in the XP family, most notably in
service pack 2 ("SP2"). Numerous SP2 security enhancements were at
last "opt-out" and not "opt-in," meaning that, for the first time,
security features such as the Windows firewall were enabled by
default. Again, this is great stuff and should be loudly applauded. I
should note that the Windows firewall was available prior to SP2, but
many/most users were blissfully unaware of it because it wasn't
enabled by default. (Boo hiss! Bad Microsoft!)
Full story here:
http://www.esecurityplanet.com/article.php/3670486
Shawn