Security Advisor
Microsoft Fighting an Unwinnable War
Is the cloud a viable tool in the fight?
Microsoft has been using the 10th anniversary of its Trustworthy Computing initiative to toot its own security horn the past few months. And it's deserved all the praise its been giving itself.
Patch Tuesday is great. And the dedication to actively seeking out and destroying security flaws every month is the golden standard that all software firms should emulate.
It even goes the next step, offering free antivirus software and security tools in the form of Microsoft Security Essentials.
However, if Microsoft has the notion that it can one day lay down its arms and live the rest of its life peacefully on a farm, it's got another thing coming.
Redmond magazine's Editor in Chief Doug Barney pointed out in the September issue of the magazine that, no matter how sophisticated its security is, hackers will always find a hole to slip into our systems.
Just like this year's cold viruses laugh in the face of last year's flu shots, hackers will continue to evolve with the technology that is set up to stop them.
Doug points out that while Microsoft won't be able to change the minds of those do-harmers, embracing the cloud could stop the flow of issues on our machines. It's a bit hard to infect a system when the OS, software and storage are all located separately from the machine.
But if we all switch to dumb machines, won't the attackers' gaze go from us to where the info is being stored?
Let me know what you think in the comments below.