Stan Beer
Thursday, 12 October 2006 19:39
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
On the one hand we have the world’s largest software company entering the security space and promising us a more secure operating system called Windows Vista. On the other hand, we have the world’s two leading security companies saying that Vista will be less secure because of its maker’s new policies. Who do we believe?
There is no question that both sides of this
argument are being waged to bolster their own vested interests. The
answer essentially can be reduced to which is the lesser of two evils.
Microsoft for some time has been touting the enhanced security features
of Vista. More recently, the software company, mindful of its
increasingly limited growth options, launched itself into the security
software market, in direct competition to its former partners Symantec
and McAfee.
The two leading security companies were understandably nervous about
competing with a company that owns the operating system they previously
made a handsome living out of securing.
The concerns of Symantec and McAfee became more intense when Microsoft
made it as plain as day that it fully intended to put them out of
business by leveraging its ownership of the operating system and the
desktop.
Firstly, Microsoft intends to make its own security center dashboard
the default security monitoring interface on the Vista desktop. Since
it is built into the operating system, it can’t be easily disabled.
Therefore Symantec or McAfee would have to run their dashboards side by
side with the Microsoft product.
