14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft and security company FireEye recently signed a partnership on improving Windows Defender with more advanced capabilities, but according to one report, the deal included more than that.
As we reported earlier this week, it was believed that one of the terms of the deal had Microsoft sharing telemetry data collected from Windows 10 computers. Although it was unclear why exactly FireEye would need Windows 10 telemetry, such an agreement was certainly worrying for users of Redmond’s latest operating system, especially given the fact that their own data was at stake.
But according to a company spokesperson, this is not at all accurate, and the deal only involves the improved security features for Windows Defender.
No telemetry sharing
A company spokesperson explains that sharing telemetry data is not a term of the partnership, so information collected from Windows 10 computers remains exclusively available to Microsoft.
“The nature of the deal between Microsoft and FireEye is to license threat intelligence content from FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence. This additional layer of intelligence includes indicators and reports of past attacks collected and edited by FireEye and enhances detection capabilities of Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (WDATP). The deal does not include the sharing of Microsoft telemetry,” the spokesperson told us.
On a side note, it’s important to know that telemetry info collected from Windows 10 systems is not in any way linked to user accounts, so even if your system sends some data to Microsoft, everything’s anonymous and encrypted. The software giant says it needs to collect some information from Windows 10 computers in order to improve performance of the operating system and to address crashes happening on our machines. Without them, it would be way more difficult for Microsoft to improve the reliability and stability of Windows 10.
The company thus guarantees that nothing is shared and Microsoft engineers are the only ones who have access to Windows 10 telemetry, which is securely transmitted to the company and then stored on encrypted servers.