Bill Gates may have shed some light on his company's security plans this week, but the revelations still don't add up to a coherent strategy for protecting customers, a Gartner security analyst maintains.
Mike Nash, the company's chief security executive, defended Microsoft's progress, and compared Windows' flaws with those in open-source Linux operating systems from Red Hat and Novell's SuSE.
Microsoft this week will reaffirm its promise to have Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 finished by the end of the quarter and its intent to have "Avalon" and "Indigo" subsystems available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 in the near future.
Microsoft Genuine Advantage is the company's attempt to counter software piracy while offering advantages to legitimate customers. That's a contrast with Microsoft's earlier anti-piracy programs, such as Product Activation, which drew fire from critics who said the measures penalized legitimate customers by requiring them to jump through hoops to use Microsoft products.
