This week at the RSA Conference 2009 in San Francisco, Microsoft is pushing its concept of End to End Trust, its vision of a safer, more trusted Internet. Microsoft first introduced this concept at last year's show, but this year the software giant is pointing at progress it has made and is issuing a call to the industry to discuss, collaborate, and agree on Internet security going forward.
"The Internet has created incredible opportunities for our society, such as e-commerce, new social interactions, and more efficient government," said Scott Charney, Microsoft corporate vice president of Trustworthy Computing, and an RSA keynoter. "But, it has also attracted the attention of criminals due to the Internet's global connectivity, anonymity, lack of traceability, and valuable targets of information. While we believe the benefits of using the Internet far outweigh the risks, people still need to be safer online than they are today. End to End Trust is Microsoft's vision for getting there."
Charney points to Internet Explorer (IE) 8, the Windows 7 beta, and its Forefront identity and security solutions as products that fulfill the company's promise to deliver functionality that is secure and privacy-protecting out of the box. And the company is now sharing its Software Development Lifecycle (SDL) practices with third parties in the hopes that it can influence others in the industry to adopt similar, safer product-development strategies.
Of course, any end-to-end security push is going to have to involve the entire industry to be successful. And a major component of Microsoft's presence at RSA this year, as with last year, is getting others involved. Thus far, there's been little evidence of an industry-wide adoption of Microsoft's core security-development principles.