Eye on Microsoft
About this Blog:
This is Shane O'Neill's blog about Microsoft's corporate strategy and its various software and services — the good, the bad and the ugly.
Windows 7 Challenge: Secure an Insecure Mobile Workforce
Most of the Windows 7 talk lately has been about the upcoming release candidate and how Windows 7 will run on netbooks.
But with RSA beginning this week in San Francisco, Microsoft has been beating the drum about Windows 7 and security and how the OS was designed to protect a workplace that bears little resemblance to the one during which Windows XP debuted in 2001.
The big difference now is that a business has to protect more mobile and remote workers because so many employees now travel with laptops or work at home or in branch offices. At the same time, IT managers need to easily manage and set policies for these devices.
During its Windows 7 research, Microsoft surveyed 4,000 customers and, not surprisingly, their top concerns were risk management, compliance and mobility.
"Securing an enterprise now is a whole new ballgame," said Gavriella Schuster, Microsoft's Senior Director of Windows Product Management, in a recent interview.
In Windows XP's early days, mobile and wireless workers were in the minority and did not have an impact on IT decision-making. Now, according to Microsoft, mobile and remote workers make up a 26.8 percent of total workforce and IDC predicts this will increase to 30.4 percent by 2011.
Also, portable laptops are now in the majority. In 2008, laptops made up 55 percent of all devices purchased in the enterprise. "When laptops are the prevalent computing device, there is more risk to loss of corporate data," says Schuster, adding that Microsoft research has estimated that 12,000 work laptops are lost or stolen each week in U.S. airports.
"Using an older OS in this state of security is like trying to keep a bear out with a picket fence," says Schuster in a not so subtle reference to Windows XP.
And since 2001, cybercrime has become an even darker science. In 2008, $264 billion was lost by American businesses in Internet scams such as spyware rootkits, denial of service attacks and phishing attacks, according to Microsoft.
With all this in mind, the software giant has a big challenge with Windows 7: create an OS for a workplace that is spreading far beyond corporate headquarters and is also increasingly vulnerable to data breaches.
The features in Windows 7 that Microsoft hopes will meet this challenge include DirectAccess for connection to corporate networks without a VPN, BitLocker and BitLocker To Go for encryption, BranchCache to speed up networks in remote offices and AppLocker to protect users from running unauthorized software. All of these features, available only in Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 7 Ultimate versions, have been covered previously by CIO.com.
With RSA as the backdrop, Microsoft has published two new blog posts: one outlining how Microsoft is securing the enterprise with Windows 7 and another that covers how Windows 7 is making mobile workers more secure.
Both posts cover some of the same Windows 7 features such as DirectAccess and BitLocker To Go, but both offer enough new details for IT professionals to judge whether or not Microsoft has truly rethought security for Windows 7.
Let me know what you think?
Previous Post: The Windows 7 Adoption Survey Says! Whatever You Want it To SayNext Post: With Windows 7 RC, Microsoft Continues to Pace Itself
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
