Security threats Toolkit

Microsoft sets sights on seamless security

Graeme Wearden in San Francisco ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 06 Feb 2007 18:06 GMT

Senior Microsoft executives have warned that the IT industry must make significant changes to network management if it is to guarantee better security.

Giving the opening keynote at the RSA Conference 2007 in San Francisco, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, Craig Mundie, said that certification technologies such as IPSec must be deployed, to allow people secure access to their data on any platform.

"It is incumbent on the industry, not just Microsoft, to develop a strategy to deliver a system where people can get any info any time, with solid security," said Mundie.

IPSec allows a network administrator to better control what a user can access.

Mundie said that Microsoft has rolled out IPSec-based security internally to control employee access, but this proved difficult. "Our IT staff had to write 4,000 rules," he admitted.

IPSec is better supported in the forthcoming Longhorn Server 2007, Mundie added, and has brought down Microsoft's internal rules to 40.