The company’s goal was to “provide ground breaking malware resistance”

Feb 28, 2013 06:57 GMT  ·  By

Windows 8 is often described as one of the most secure Windows contraptions to date, as it bundles new technologies supposed to protect users and keep their data on the safe side while browsing the web.

Chris Hallum, senior product manager on the Windows Team, said in a blog post that Windows 8 was designed with security in mind from the very beginning and, aside from the software solutions we can all see in the operating system, the new Windows also relies on some hardware solutions supposed to enhance its security.

“Our goals were to provide ground breaking malware resistance, make data encryption easy enough that everyone can deploy it, and finally we wanted to modernize access control. We understand that these goals can’t be achieved in software alone and that we needed to anchor our security in immutable hardware,” he explained.

The blog post then goes on to describe three of these technologies, namely the Universal Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 and the Encrypted Hard Drives that protect users’ data and keep it secure.

“Early on in the Windows 8 product cycle we worked closely with our partners in the hardware industry to make sure that the hardware necessary to achieve our goals would be available as options or even as fundamental requirements for Windows 8 Hardware certification,” Hallum added.

Security experts around the world agree that Windows 8 will be harder to hack as compared to the previous versions of Microsoft’s operating system, as the Redmond-based technology giant has continued its efforts to make the software more secure.

Rapid7 CISO and Metasploit founder HD Moore said in a statement that Windows 8 packs important security improvements, while Microsoft is trying to patch found vulnerabilities in a shorter time.

“The additional improvements in Windows 8 and the sky-high market for zero day may reduce the public visibility of security flaws to an all-time low,” Moore explained. “Microsoft still has work to do, but relative to other large software vendors, their ability to respond to security issues this year has improved.”