by Neil MacDonald | September 22, 2012 | Comments Off
I saw yesterday that Microsoft had released the out of band patch for Internet Explorer as they had committed to do. Certainly, Microsoft’s motivation to quickly release the patch out of band was affected by calls from various enterprises and governments to ban the use of IE until the issue was resolved. What can [...]
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Category: Microsoft Microsoft Security Windows 7 Windows 8 Tags: Browser Security, Defense-in-Depth, Microsoft, Microsoft Security, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | September 13, 2012 | 3 Comments
I blogged about this question years ago, but a recent blog on CSO got me thinking once again. Has anything changed? Thoughts: 1) The question “Has antivirus outlived its value?” is wrong. AV hasn’t been AV for years. Gartner stopped calling the market “AV” back in 2006. Modern Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP – the term [...]
Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Endpoint Protection Platform Information Security Next-generation Security Infrastructure Windows 8 Tags: Adaptive Security Infrastucture, Apple, Beyond Anti-Virus, Defense-in-Depth, Endpoint Protection Platform, Information Security, Microsoft, Microsoft Security, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | September 6, 2012 | 1 Comment
There’s a story behind the title of this blog Recently, I had a discussion in regards to Microsoft’s BitLocker with a client. One of the issues I call out in my research on BitLocker is that (unlike competing third party products), Microsoft doesn’t have an option to synchronize the pre-boot PIN with the Windows login [...]
Category: General Technology Information Security Microsoft Microsoft Security Windows 7 Tags: Best Practices, Endpoint Protection Platform, Information Security, Microsoft, Microsoft Security, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | September 28, 2011 | 1 Comment
I’ve been out the past two weeks visiting with clients and have been meaning to summarize my impression of the upcoming Windows 8 (expected mid 2012) from a security point of view. I attended Microsoft’s recent BUILD conference for developers where Windows 8 made its first official appearance. You can see my real-time tweets and [...]
Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Information Security Microsoft Security Windows 7 Tags: Apple, Beyond Anti-Virus, Defense-in-Depth, Information Security, Microsoft, Microsoft Security, Whitelisting, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | August 4, 2011 | Comments Off
Licensing changes for Microsoft’s enterprise endpoint antimalware protection solution that were announced in March at Microsoft’s MMS conference take affect this month. If you are licensed under Microsoft’s Core Client Access License program, it now includes CALs for Forefront Endpoint Protection. For many organizations that are already licensed under Core CAL, this means that FEP [...]
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Category: Endpoint Protection Platform Microsoft Microsoft Security Windows 7 Tags: Apple, Endpoint Protection Platform, Microsoft, Microsoft Security, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | March 22, 2011 | Comments Off
I’ve spent the past day and a half attending Microsoft’s Management Summit in Las Vegas. From my perspective the announcement that will affect the most enterprises from a security perspective was a change in licensing related to Forefront. Some history — in 2010, Microsoft reorganized the Server and Tools Business Unit placing the Forefront Endpoint [...]
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Category: Cloud Cloud Security Endpoint Protection Platform Microsoft Microsoft Security Next-generation Data Center Virtualization Virtualization Security Tags: Cloud Security, Endpoint Protection Platform, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Microsoft Security, Next-generation Data Center, Virtualization, Virtualization Security, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | March 7, 2011 | 4 Comments
I was performing some background research on the number and severity of vulnerabilities produced by Apple, Microsoft and other vendors when I ran across something quite interesting. (BTW – I was researching the issue addressed in this research note for clients — whether or not antimalware software is recommended for enterprise Apple Macintosh endpoints.) Microsoft, like [...]
Category: Application Security Information Security Microsoft Security Windows 7 Tags: Apple, Application Security, application security testing tools, Browser Security, Microsoft, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | January 21, 2011 | Comments Off
In my kick off post for 2011, I talked about the need for IT to expand the depth and breadth of patching. In the follow-on post, I talked about the need to migrate more users to run with standard user (and not administrative level) privileges. One of the challenges to both of these actions is [...]
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Category: Application Security Information Security Microsoft Microsoft Security Windows 7 Tags: Application Security, Best Practices, Browser Security, Information Security, Microsoft, Microsoft Security, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | October 28, 2010 | 4 Comments
During our interview last week with Steve Ballmer, one point of contention was whether or not Windows was losing market share. The context of the question was a discussion on consumerization and its impact on enterprises. What our clients are telling us is that there are an increasing number of Macs being brought into the [...]
Category: Microsoft Virtualization Security Windows 7 Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Reducing Complexity, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | October 26, 2010 | 1 Comment
In 2005, Ray Ozzie penned his famous memo in which he laid out the challenge for Microsoft as it entered the era of cloud-based services. I interviewed Ray Ozzie to discuss Microsoft’s cloud strategy in detail in this 2009 Gartner research document. Last week, Ray Ozzie announced he was leaving Microsoft. Yesterday, Ray’s last memo [...]
Category: Cloud Microsoft Windows 7 Tags: Microsoft, Reducing Complexity, Windows
