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• November 4, 2004 •
This Thursday, at the RSA Conference Europe 2004 in Barcelona, Spain, Rich Kaplan, corporate vice president of the Security Business & Technology Unit at Microsoft, delivered a keynote address in which he provided an update on Microsoft's progress in helping to improve the security for customers worldwide.
Kaplan highlighted Microsoft's technology advancements in providing greater isolation and resiliency to systems to improve their ability to mitigate the impact of malicious code, including the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) last August 2004. According to Kaplan, Windows XP SP2 has been distributed to more than 110 million customers worldwide so far. SP2 provides safer browsing, stronger default security settings and new, automatically installed security features to better protect customers and their computers from hackers, viruses and other security risks.
In response to positive customer feedback, Microsoft is making its Security Bulletin Advanced Notification program publicly available to provide all customers with advanced, monthly general information on security. The purpose of the notification is to assist customers with resource planning for the scheduled monthly security bulletin. Starting in November, Microsoft will publish a general summary of planned security bulletins three business days before each month's scheduled release date, which will occur on the second Tuesday of the month. The information will be available at the Microsoft Security Web site, and will include the number of bulletins that may be released, the anticipated severity ratings, and an overview of products that may be affected. Beginning in December, customers can also sign up on that Web site to receive notifications by e-mail.
Kaplan also noted that over the past year, Microsoft has provided security training to more than 540,000 IT professionals, developers and partners worldwide, including more than 170,000 in Europe alone through events, webcasts and participation in European countries' Microsoft Security Days. In addition, 18 European countries and NATO now participate in Microsoft's Government Security Program (GSP), providing both source access to Windows and Office and technical information to national governments about the Microsoft Windows platform.
More information about Microsoft and its efforts to address computer security can be found at the Microsoft Security Web site.
