Allchin Clarifies His Statement on Vista and Antivirus Software

Microsoft's Jim Allchin (co-president of their platform and services division) has wisely backtracked on his earlier comments that Vista's security settings would allow his 7 year old son to run his computer without antivirus running on the machine. Among other things, and without listing them all here, Allchin neglected to consider that viruses are just a subset of the malware that PC's can be subjected to. Not wise.

As mentioned in Information Week, on Friday, Gartner analyst John Pescatore stated that Allchin's PC lockdown was all well and good, but the practice wouldn't cut it in the real world. "The typical way that users get in trouble is when they get an e-mail that says 'click here' and then they click there," he said. "They've just been tricked into loading software." ( http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=194300088 )

Perhaps we'll see an endorsement for a security suite by Allchin's son after Vista is released!

Vista and Network Security

Some of the saber rattling between MSFT and other vendors in the marketplace seems to be toning down a bit. There are mixed messages coming out from security vendors regarding their ability for their solutions to work with Vista. Nonetheless, when some of of the larger vendors are stating that they aren't getting the information they need from Microsoft, something is wrong. In particular, when there is a disconnect and MSFT execs are saying "we provided the information" and the other vendors are saying "not!" This needs to be resolved before Vista is released. Ballmer - give the leading vendors the access they need.