Yes, the ink is barely dry on the boxes for Windows Vista and we're already planning the next version of Windows. And no, I have no clue what it'll be called. But that isn't a decision I get to make, oh well... The folks responsible for the firewall...

Surely you've heard, too many times by now, about the radio transmitters "discovered" in some Canadian coins. From the moment I first read about it, the steamy stench of pasture patties loomed large in the air. I watched in amazement as the story grew...

OK, I need to complain a bit here. Yesterday I went to Best Buy to get a new digital camera. I already knew which one I wanted, so I found a sales guy, pointed to the display unit, and said, "I'd like one of these." "Sure," he replied. He found...

Another gem in the download center: an Outlook (2003/2007) add-in with which you can report junk email to FrontBridge. Junk E-mail Reporting Tool 1.0 for Outlook The Junk E-mail Reporting Tool submits e-mail to Microsoft when you explicitly choose...

I was browsing through the Microsoft download pages today -- yeah, even we employees occasionally find little nuggets interspersed among the usual updates and such. I noticed a pair of whitepapers that will answer a common question I hear from many of...

Last week at TechEd Europe I showed the BitLocker command-line interface. At other TechEds I've mentioned it but didn't show it. The CLI provides full control over BitLocker, including enabling it on any NTFS volume on the system (the Control Panel UI...

At many TechEds this year I've presented information about the new TCP/IP stack in Windows Vista. One of the important advances is its automatic performance tuning . With some of the early pre-release builds of Windows Vista, people were reporting problems...

During the past few months many people have lamented that Windows lacks a nuclear missile style control option for administrator passwords. Surely you've read about or seen photographs of missile silos where two operators, separated by a distance greater...

Well well. Looks like a few new iPod owners are getting infected when they attach their players to their computers. I'll quote the first paragraph from Apple's web site: We recently discovered that a small number - less than 1% - of the Video iPods...

Imagine my surprise to read that Microsoft is removing NAP from Windows Vista ! Does this guy actually get paid money to write this drivel? The particular folks quoted in the article all have their own agendas, of course. News flash: we aren't dropping...

It's bad enough that the blasted spammers pollute the value of blogs and open forums by hijacking them with their nefarious comments for questionable pharmaceuticals claiming to extend particular body parts. I have recently received, only via private...

My good friend Jamie Sharp sent me this link today. It's amazing: watch how Adam and Jamie easily defeat a fingerprint lock the manufacturer claims has never been broken. As if to snub the claims, they break it three times! Supposedly it monitors pulse...

An email access policy can be expressed in one of two ways: E-mail is mission critical to our business. Therefore, we permit employees to read and compose e-mail from any location in the world where employees can access the Internet, using either...

Amazing how long the legs are on the AOL search debacle. Of course, we in the online community often beat such storeis to death, if only because they deserve it! Recently Kim Cameron posted the search history of user 16006693, which flits "from politics...

Two weeks ago I delivered my Windows Vista System Integrity presentation at the TechEds in New Zealand (Auckland) and Australia (Sydney). It was largely the same as the presention at TechEds in America and India, but updated to reflect changes made in...

Ah, it's a wonderful Saturday afternoon here in Singapore. I just finished up some customer meetings in Bangkok and Manila this week, and TechEd Asia starts next week in Kuala Lumpur. So I'm hanging out Singapore for the weekend, spending some time with...

By now, many of you have heard us speak about or have read our writings on the improved security capabilities of Windows Vista. As I've said at a number of events now, the research I've done into these capabilities has convinced me that enterprises should...

One of my favorite new security features in Windows Vista is Mandatory Integrity Control (MIC). It’s a classical computer science concept from the 1970s that’s finally getting its first commercial implementation—and of this I’m quite proud. While discretionary...

Looks like this is becoming a regular thing for me. I like both these events very much. Their smaller size allows me to spend more time with individual folks between sessions. TechMentor is 9-13 October in Las Vegas. I'm delivering three presentations...

Some time ago I had a discussion with a friend. He disagreed with my recommendations on how to configure a border router and the firewall behind it. I claimed that in the border router between you and your ISP, configure the six rules to block most denial...

So it would seem that a statement I made during TechEd US last week in Boston has mildly stirred a bit of controversy -- no surprise there, I guess, heh. One of my presentations gave an overview of what's new in ISA Server 2006 ( download your copy of...

Yeah, it's been a while since I've written a post, and I have some ideas I'll get to once the prep work for TechEd this year settles down a bit. But look -- why in the world do the freaking spammers have to start targetting blogs now? I keep my comments...

That web site runs on WinISP, an experimental ISP hosted for Microsoft employees to use for testing. WinISP is having problems of late, as many of you have written to me in emails. I'm looking for a new home for my PowerPoints and recordings; once I find...

I like this a lot. http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/weblogs/spaf/general/post-30/ In the practice of security we have accumulated a number of “rules of thumb” that many people accept without careful consideration. Some of these get included in policies...

Two-factor authentication continues to grow in popularity and emerge as a security requirement for many people I meet with. At Microsoft, we use smartcards internally for VPN access right now; soon we'll be requiring smartcards for domain logon, too....