14 DAY TRIAL // As the connected world is becoming a reality with each passing day, pushed by the evolution of bandwidth and pervasive Internet connectivity, Microsoft has outlined the steps it has taken to create a trustworthy computing environment. At RSA 2007, the Redmond Company has presented its roadmap to Secure Anywhere Access.
Starting with the new security enhancements introduced in Windows Vista, such as User Account Control and Group Policy for Devices, Microsoft, through the voices of Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie, additionally focused on other security related products and services for a trustworthy computing environment.
The launch of Identity Lifecycle Manager 2007, the Forefront Server Security Management Console public beta, Internet Explorer 7 support for Extended Validation SSL Certificates, the Windows CardSpace proof-of-concept and the expansion of Microsoft's Phishing Filter service online database are part of the Redmond juggernaut's roadmap for Anywhere Access.
"The threat landscape has evolved in fairly dramatic ways. When we first started working on this, most of the attacks were done for the purpose of notoriety. We were worried about script kiddies and other things like that. Today, it's a lot more serious, it's a lot more nefarious than it was five or six years ago. And the fact that we have so many things connected and we have so many people connected, not just hundreds of millions of PCs, but growing on billions of phones, and rolling out more and more things all the time, this challenge is going to get tougher," stated Mundie.
"Identity, I think is where the weakest link in these systems have been. You know, the overhead for password reset, the ease of guessing people's passwords, they use the same passwords on consumer things they sign up for that they use in the corporation. So passwords are not only weak, passwords have a huge problem in that you don't - if you get more and more of them, the worse it is," commented Gates.