Microsoft: Users may have to pay for security

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: William Knowles <wk () c4i org>

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2123526,00.html

Tuesday 8th October 2002
Peter Judge, Tech Update UK  

RSA 2002: Microsoft is considering charging for additional security
options, and admits it didn't move on security until customers were
ready to pay for it

Microsoft "may offer new security abilities on a paid basis,"  
according to the company's chief technical officer Craig Mundie. The
possibility is under consideration within Microsoft's security
business unit, recently set up under its own vice president, Mike
Nash.

The idea is still only hypothetical, but represents an acknowledgement
that Microsoft sees security not just as a necessary condition to
reassure existing and future customers, but also as a potential source
of revenue.

"Our work was diffuse, but we have quite a few security initiatives,"  
said Mundie, speaking on Tuesday at the RSA Conference on IT security
in Paris. "Mike is assessing that. The unit will have inputs into
products, marketing, training and other areas."

In presenting Microsoft's trustworthy computing initiative, Mundie
defended the company's reluctance to follow through and accept legal
responsibility for the security of its products. "If we took that
responsibility, say for a big contract at Airbus, I would have to take
out a giant insurance policy from Lloyds or another insurance broker,
and pay a giant invoice," said Mundie. "The product would then cost
not 50 euros, but 50 million."

Legal liability would cost the user greatly he said, and contracts
like the one he described were the exact opposite of the normal
situation. "In such a situation, the computer must not change, and
only technicians could touch it. This is the antithesis of the general
purpose mass market business."

Windows runs an arbitrary set of applications, in an arbitrary
configuration, with arbitrary devices, said Mundie. "The operating
system is designed to run on machines that are not designed yet."  
While Microsoft could demand that it creates the drivers for all
hardware, the industry would not accept that. "Each time we accede to
the reality of the industry, we accede to the problem," he said.

Asked why it has taken Microsoft 25 years to get trustworthy computing
into the forefront of its efforts, he said: "Because customers
wouldn't pay for it until recently." Admitting this was a flippant
answer to a flippant question, Mundie said that chief information
officers had only recently begun to demand security, and it is only in
the last ten years that Microsoft has attempted to play in the
security-requiring worlds of banking payroll and networked systems.


 
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