Gates Outlines Future Security Efforts

Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chief software architect, used his keynote address at the annual security conference sponsored by RSA Security in Feb. 2004 to reiterate Microsoft’s commitment to its Trustworthy Computing initiative and to outline future technologies and alliances to improve customers’ security and privacy. The new technologies-such as a “caller-ID” to reduce spam-appear reasonable, but it’s not clear when and how they will be delivered, how they will interoperate with other approaches, and what they will cost.

Technical Measures

Gates used his keynote speech to describe security technologies that Microsoft will introduce over the next several years, beginning with Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and continuing through improvements to Microsoft’s developer tools, spam reduction measures, software that better detects typical virus activities, and futuristic ID cards.

Windows XP SP2. Microsoft has made no secret of the fact that security will be a major focus of Windows XP SP2. Gates used a portion of his keynote address to demonstrate Windows XP SP2 improvements to the Windows Firewall (formerly the Internet Connection Firewall), which will work better with applications, and the new Windows Security Center, which will provide a single location on the system tray to check the status of security settings, such as whether antivirus software is running and whether the firewall and auto-update features are activated.