Where fore art thou NGSCB?

A few years back, all the rage was the new advancement in trusted computing, and the "next generation secure computing base" (NGSCB).... Microsoft's software architecture to increase the security and privacy of computer users.

As we all know, most of the "Longhorn vision" of NGSCB that was talked about in 2003 has been pulled. Vista is not expected to contain much of the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base technology, owing to significant difficulties in getting third-party developers to work with the new platform. And that's sad, since some of the hardware vendors are now distributing product with the TCG chip.

Yet like the Phoenix, the vision of NGSCB just won't die. Which, to be honest, is a good thing. Microsoft has butched the NGSCB group a few times, and I recently found out they are now calling themselved the "Systems Integrity Team". And they have a blog!

There isn't a lot of content there as of yet, but their last couple of posts have shown some constructive thoughts. Will be interesting to follow their progress in the coming years.

So NGSCB isn't dead. It's just been renamed.