Aside from making continuous progress toward resolving application and hardware compatibility issues on its latest OS, Microsoft is also focusing on improving the security features of Vista in SP1, especially in light of a study by Amplitude Researcher that shows that half of Windows Vista adoption was driven by security.

According to Windows Vista blog, Microsoft will unveil, as part of its upcoming Vista SP1 release, the following security enhancements:

• The provision of a more secure way for security software vendors to communicate with Windows Security Center;
• The release of application programming interfaces (APIs) by which third-party security and malicious software detection applications can work with kernel patch protection on x64 versions of Windows Vista;
• The improvement of the security of running RemoteApp programs and desktops by allowing Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) files to be signed;
• The addition of an Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) to the list of available PRNGs in Windows Vista; and
• The expansion of the BitLocker Drive Encryption (BDE) to offer an additional multifactor authentication method that combines a key protected by the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) with a Startup key stored on a USB storage device and a user-generated personal identification number (PIN).

Most of these security enhancements address some of the early concerns about Vista among some vendors and security administrators about data integrity and security monitoring.

With the upcoming release of Vista Service Pack 1 early next year, Microsoft is hoping that Vista SP1 will kick start more enterprise migrations to its latest OS, Vnunet said.

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Related:

Trend Micro releases security software update for Vista

AMD releases ATI Vista driver patch

ZoneAlarm releases its Vista-compatible firewall

Microsoft releases Live OneCare 2.0 beta for Vista; better security options exist

Microsoft tightens Vista kernel defenses, updates PatchGuard

Entry was posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2007 at 1:50 pm under Security, Vista.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Ruben Francia.