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Vista Arriving With New Security Features
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-11-09
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Microsoft's volume licensing customers will get their hands on the latest operating system from the company first, as Vista entered the manufacturing process.
 | | "Almost time to get your upgrade on!" |  |
It's hard to imagine any sizable enterprise kicking off a full-tilt upgrade of all of its hardware to run Vista as soon as it arrives this month. More surprising may be Vista finally reaching the point where it will be released, as it has been in development for five years.
Microsoft has pounded away on the security drum, and claimed this version will be its most secure operating system. Sven Hallauer, a Microsoft Release Manager overseeing Vista's departure echoed that in a statement describing out of the box security and other features of the OS.
He noted how the Secure Development Lifecycle process used to manage Vista's development used automated tools to proactively find problems in code before it could enter the new operating system.
Vista will have features available at launch that for enterprise system administrators should mitigate some of the havoc users can wreak on their PCs. Those features include Internet Explorer Protected Mode, User Account Control, and Windows Defender.
Many of the remote code execution exploits that have cropped up for Windows 2000 and XP machines depend on the rights of the user to determine how much damage they can inflict. A user account with limited rights restricts what a malicious bit of code can do.
That process seems to be the primary motivation for Vista's security features. By heading off potential exploits at an enterprise's weakest point, its relatively non-technical userbase, the wide-ranging impact of attacks that have famously crippled thousands of machines, like the Sasser worm, should be less of a concern now.
Hallauer said Microsoft has looked at known security issues during Vista's development, to determine if they could affect Vista:
We did a study of all critical issues that affected Windows XP SP2 between November 2003 to September 2006 and found that the vast majority of these issues would either not affect Windows Vista at all or would have been reduced in severity due to the changes we've made. We know that even though Windows Vista is a more secure operating system it's not impenetrable, and there will always be people looking for flaws. We've worked hard to make their job difficult.
Microsoft's next step will be to make Vista ready for consumers. Nick White posted at Vista's official blog how this milestone means the various PC makers and independent software and hardware vendors will fine-tune their products with drivers that will work properly with Vista.
Consumers should see Vista become available on January 30th, 2007.
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Tag: Vista
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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