It is traditional at Microsoft that all those that participated in the development of a software product receive Ship-It Awards as a small attention recognizing their work. This was of course the case with Windows Vista as well. The Vista Ship-It Award included a RTM copy of the Ultimate edition of the operating system as well as a booklet mentioning those that worked on building the platform. In this context, you'd think that the team responsible for the security across Vista would be in the spotlight. Well not quite. Microsoft managed to exclude the Windows Security Access Control team completely from the brochure. Or maybe the company didn't include them so that users couldn't know who to blame!

"FOR ALL THE... Delighted customers, great ideas, tough deadlines, clever solutions, lines of code, pages of specs, runs of automation, lines of text, screens of UI, missed dinners, fixed bugs, inspiring teamwork, countless iterations, courage to break the rules, time away from loved ones, times you rose to the occasion, late nights, early mornings, delayed vacations, chances you took, long meetings, short meetings, canceled meetings, killed features, features that wouldn't die, crashed machines, moments of victory, moments of defeat, coffees, doughnuts, pizzas, beers, relentless dedication, blood, sweat, and tears. THANK YOU," reads the message on the back of the Vista Ultimate package, according to Nick White, Microsoft Product Manager.

Microsoft's official thank you message does not mention security, but does reference fixed bugs. Still, Klaus Schutz, Director of Development Windows Security Access Control and the adjacent team were completely omitted from the Vista RTM booklet. If you think about it... the Vista security team is completely missing. Now what does that tell you about the security of the operating system? The image included on the left, courtesy of Sandi Hardmeier, is illustrative of the missing Klaus Schutz. The Director should have come between Schuster and M... Schutz. But nothing...