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Ballmer Talks About Vista Security
John Stith
Staff Writer
2005-10-20
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke on Wednesday at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. He covered a number of topics and one stuck out prominently. The security concerns for Windows: Vista have been paramount in discussions because various versions of Windows have been brutally attacked by hackers all over the world for years.
 | | Steve Ballmer Talks Security |  |
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Microsoft is intimately aware of problems with security in its software. They release security updates every month. Back in August, they released an update and those not able to install the patch right away paid dearly as worms proceeded to wiggle and create myriad problems.
It's no great secret Microsoft had to make adjustments in the release schedule of Windows: Vista because it was oirginally slated to be out now. A big part of the delay was security. The size of the new version required a lot of code and lot of checks into the security issues for that code.
Ballmer points out some of those changes in his recent conversation Thomas Bittman at the symposium, "The changes we made to our development process are really all about security, reliability and quality. We were losing major cycle times essentially by not capturing security defects and quality defects early enough in our design cycle.
"Everybody here who runs a development shop understands the advantage of finding things early. We changed our process. We changed our tools. We now have tools that we've written that will post-process a piece of source code, will look for potential security defects.
"We've made that rich and integrated part of the development cycle. We've put a security set of dates and checks into that cycle. So while it's making us more agile and fast-moving, it's doing it primarily by putting security and reliability earlier and more appropriately into the product."
What happens with Windows in the future remains to be seen. Vista is out in beta so the developers are currently working it over but security remains a primary concern. The schedule shows Windows: Vista due out in late 2006 so they've got a long way to go. Right now, Ballmer says Vista will be ready to install on computers, safe and stable from day one.
In many cases, however, new versions of Windows have been kind of like roller coasters. Don't ride for the first year or so because many of the kinks are still being worked out. We'll see if Steve and Bill can keep this one on track.
About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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