Vista SP1 won't sacrifice security for compatibility

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 30 August 2007 02:58

Business IT - Technology

With a large-scale beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 planned for the next few weeks, what can we expect in terms of application compatibility?
According to Jon DeVaan, Senior Vice President of Microsoft's Windows core operating system division, "One of our top priorities for Windows Vista SP1 is to avoid causing regressions in application compatibility".

But he did add a rider: "Windows Vista SP1 will provide some fixes for application compatibility, but by and large we are sticking with the promise we made of first delivering superior security to end users, and we won’t make any changes in Windows Vista SP1 that compromise that for the sake of better compatibility."

In other words, if an application doesn't already work with Vista, don't expect that to change after SP1, though you might get lucky. Instead, look to the application's developer for an update.

Vista SP1 will include a significant number of "proactive" security changes, DeVaan said. These do not represent fixes for specific vulnerabilities, instead they represent Microsoft's efforts to head off potential threats. "[W]e identify the root cause of each security bulletin and improve our internal tools to eliminate code patterns that could lead to future vulnerabilities," said DeVaan.

He also pointed out that users may not have to wait until SP1's release to take advantage of its features: "many of the improvements will be available prior to the release of the service pack through [Windows Update, Windows Server Update Services and other channels]."