February 24, 2004

Gates speaks about Security at RSA Conference

Back in December I said that Bill Gates have guts. When he announced he was going to go to a premium security conference like RSA and speak... I was shocked.

Well he spoke today, and I don't think anyone would argue that he had some real "grit" in his presentation. He announced a few things of interest:

  • The improved firewall. (Check out this screenshot courtesy of Neowin.net)
  • A new "Windows Security Center" that offers a centralized place to view security settings and get advice on how to evaluate a PC's vulnerabilities. (Check out this screenshot)
  • A new technology called "active protection technology" that Microsoft says can make computers more resilient in the face of an attack.
  • Announced a new partnership with RSA to tie in SecurID tokens more closely into Windows (Yaah!!)
I am mostly pumped about the last one. I have always liked two factor authentication as a way to address the weakness in passwords. Problem is, no one can afford an AceServer and Ace/Agents all over the place to properly utilize it. With this announcement, hopefully prices will either drop... or a free scaled back alternative will be available to desktop users.

Update: Seems NeoWin doesn't like people linking to their screenshots. You should go here and click on them yourselves. Thanks to Arc for pointing this out.

Posted by SilverStr at February 24, 2004 11:58 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Cool stuff. It still depends on users actually *using* them. My accountant protected her Windows ME system with a password of "oh just hit enter". Why? "You have to remember passwords." I think she's more J Random User than most people I hang out with, and she's the sort of person who gets viruses, worms, and through using IE and OE (I evangelized Firefox and Thunderbird), lets them loose on the rest of the world.

Posted by: Arcterex at February 24, 2004 01:05 PM

BTW, your screenshot links don't work. Could you get them locally? They just end up at the neowin.net home page :(

Posted by: Arcterex at February 24, 2004 01:07 PM

The weakest link is the human factor. Its hard to get around that. You are right that in the past its been much to easy to get around the security. TBH, having a strong password in W98 was kinda useless anyways.. it was much to easy to circumvent.

But thats not the point. With more secure defaults, and tools like these new ones on by default, and easily accessable... it should make the process of security easier for people like your accountant. They will take the path of least resistance... which in this case... will be amore secure default!

Thanks for pointing out the screenshot issue. It works fine here for me, but I am guessing thats because I was already at the site and had cookies set for it. I added a link to the main Neowin article, so you can click on the screenshots from there. I am much to busy to disassemble their cookie method to get the links to work direct.

Posted by: SilverStr at February 24, 2004 01:18 PM