RSSMicrosoft: Progress Made on Security
By Nate Mook | Published July 11, 2005, 3:22 PM
Microsoft over the weekend told attendees at its annual Worldwide Partner Conference that it has made considerable strides in securing its products since 2003, when company CEO Steve Ballmer pledged to make security a top priority.
Speaking at the conference, Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Security Business and Technology Unit cited Windows XP SP2 as a prime example of Microsoft's progress. Nash said over 218 million copies of SP2 have been installed to date, despite reports that business have been slow to adopt the service pack.
On the server side, two million copies of Windows Server 2003 SP1 have been installed by customers.
"It has been almost two years since Steve Ballmer addressed this audience making a companywide commitment that Microsoft would make security a top priority, and we have been focused on delivering on that commitment," said Nash.
As part of the change, Microsoft has implement the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL), which is designed to cut down on the number of vulnerabilities in the company's software. Over 15,000 developers, program managers and testers are part of the program.
"We've taken the feedback we've received from customers and partners and turned that into action, making notable strides developing more secure products, and delivering essential guidance and tools to help customers be more secure," added Nash.
Nash also highlighted new and upcoming products designed to help customers keep their systems protected from the increasing wave of viruses and spyware. Windows AntiSpyware has been downloaded over 21 million times, Microsoft said. Windows OneCare, the company's new antivirus and PC protection service, will also be delivered in beta form this year.
Microsoft will additionally expand its partner program to include two new security specializations: Security Management and Infrastructure Security.
Am I alone in not having any problems with sp2 whatsoever?
Score: 0
|No you're not. No crashes, no freezes, no infamous BSODs, no sypware/malware/whateverware here (and come to think of it, that was already the case for me before SP2 anyway...)
What's puzzling is that XP is such an easy system to maintain that one fails to imagine how one could be so bad at it that one ends up reinstalling over and over... I bet that's the tabula rasa approach to computing.
Score: 0
|No, most of us are perfectly happy with XPSP2, but you have to bear in mind 3 things.
1/ You only tend to hear from the people with problems, their 2 year old spyware/virus infected PC did not upgrade very well.
2/ bashing Microsoft products is incredibly cool.
3/ Working Microsoft software is not newsworthy, the gutterpress (The Register, The Inquirer, Betanews) are only interested in negative news stories about Microsoft security vunrabilities. Did they report the patch Tuesday when no patches were issued? of course not...
Score: 0
|Nope. No problems with it here.
Score: 0
|Heh...the first 3 times I installed XP, there were major problems with BSODs and in one case harddrive corruption.
I use Win2k now, since I don't think XP likes me. :P
Score: 0
|I have to disagree with 3. They didn't report it because if they did, people would flame them, and if they didn't, people would flame them.
"Microsoft releases another security patch..."
"Microsoft releases another security patch..."
"Microsoft releases another security patch..."
It happens like once a week these days. :P
Score: 0
|Yet have you ever subscribed to a *nix software security list? Look how many of those exploits are found every single day, I get more of those per day than I get per month with windows and microsoft related software. I compare the two because you require more than just what comes with the linux kernel to make it function (tar, gz, gcc, make... etc).
Score: 0
|Why don't you go count how many require a reboot. Thats one of my only complaints about Windows patches. The other would be that most other OSs come with hundreds sometimes thousands of applications and utilities outside the OS itself, so of course there are more patches.
Rather have more patches than none no matter what platform.
Score: 0
|Lo and behold, a few hours after that post, BetaNews scrapes around in the tech gutter, and finds some news about 3 critical patches this month...
Why do we never see "Red Hat Critical Security Vunrability" news items? They happen regular as clockwork, but is not Microsoft, so not easy to b**** about...
Score: 0
|These latest 3 don't require a reboot though...
Score: 0
|It's really simple, when MS designed the basic architecture for windows they totally seem to have forgotten about security. And since XP is based on NT technology they have been dragging along the mistake for years now.
Unless Ms starts from scratch they will never have an OS that is so secure and stable as Linux. They have made progress with XP that is true. XP is far more stable, but I think security still lacks bigtime
Score: 0
|It has only taken Microsoft ten years to start grasping out what real security looks lilke. It will take them ten more years to start implementing it.
Score: 0
|Windows is already pretty secure. XPSP2 is darn good.
Ultimately, if your a muppet with no clue, and run with admin/root acount under any OS, your in trouble...
Score: 0
|Vanilla XP on the internet will be hacked in 12 minutes, that's not secure. It's getting there, but until longhorn is released it can't be called pretty secure out of the box.
Score: 0
|"Speaking at the conference, Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Security Business and Technology Unit cited Windows XP SP2 as a prime example of Microsoft's progress. "
Oh I can't wait to hear the MS haters reaction to that line...
Score: 0
|"...cited Windows XP SP2 as a prime example of Microsoft's progress"
That comes off as a punchline!
Score: 0
|Am I Hater?
Windows Xp Service Pack 2: Reinstalled seven times.
Gentoo, Linux: Reinstalled *none*
Score: 0
|Mac OSX: No install - Priceless
You forgot the last one to turn it into a mastercard commercial. :P
Score: 0
|We forgot the add:
Windows XP SP2: cannot be installed. Sorry, wrong cluster size. :P
Score: 0
|