Lipner Steps Down as Head of MSRC

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1110879,00.asp

By Dennis Fisher
May 28, 2003 

Steve Lipner, the head of Microsoft Corp.'s Security Response Center,
is stepping down to take a new job at the company. Kevin Kean, a
seven-year Microsoft veteran, will be taking over Lipner's duties,
Microsoft said Wednesday.

This departure marks the second such leadership change at the MSRC in
less than a year. Scott Culp, the former manager of the center, quit
in December to become a program manager for security strategies under
Scott Charney, the company's chief security strategist. Lipner will
become the director of security engineering strategy in the Security
Business Unit, headed by Mike Nash.

Kean is currently a senior group product manager for Windows Server
2003 and has been involved with the Secure Windows Initiative. He
joined Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., in 1996 as a group product
manager for management and communications products.

In his new role, Kean will take over responsibility for the company's
entire security response organization, a group that regularly comes
under harsh criticism from users and security experts alike. The MSRC
is responsible for responding to any security issue found in a
Microsoft product and is the group that writes the security bulletins
and produces patches when flaws are found.

As such, it is often the MSRC that receives the brunt of the criticism
when users believe that the company is not responding quickly enough
to security threats or when a patch causes problems on users'
machines. Kean joins the MSRC at a time when Microsoft is focusing
much of its internal resources on an attempt to improve the security
of its products and the way that it responds to vulnerabilities and
customer concerns.

In his new role, Lipner will be responsible for defining Microsoft's
security development processes and plans for their application to new
product generations. His team will also define and execute new
programs to help Microsoft customers deploy and operate their systems
securely.

Lipner, whose title was director of security assurance, has been at
Microsoft for more than three years. He joined the company after
stints doing at The Mitre Corp. and Digital Equipment Corp., among
other places.



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