By Jeff Jones, director, Trustworthy Computing

Today at RSA, Scott Charney’s keynote highlighted security industry challenges and  accomplishments that will have long-term impact and together form a basis for optimism. Scott shares his views on steady security progress in this Microsoft blog.

Today, our special guest Brock Johnson, security reporter, spoke with attendees about their top of mind thoughts on security, cloud computing, and other timely topics. Watch the video below for today's highlights, and please join us tomorrow night.

By Jeff Jones, director, Trustworthy Computing

On the Internet, the exploitation of vulnerabilities specific to country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) registries has become an increasingly common problem. Today at RSA, Scott Charney, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Trustworthy Computing, announced availability of our new Microsoft Country-Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) Registry Security Assessment Service to help registry operators find and fix security vulnerabilities before they are exploited. The service will be available at no charge to registry operators. Read more about this free new service on our Microsoft Security blog post.

By Jeff Jones, director, Trustworthy Computing

I’m here at RSA in beautiful San Francisco. The event is starting to get busy with people arriving, registering and attending sessions. I met with colleagues today and attended the CSA summit. Watch our video to share in the RSA experience and hear what attendees are saying. Tomorrow, if you are here at the show, please stop by the booth and pick up your entry token for the Microsoft party and, if you have time, get your caricature drawn by local San Francisco artists using Fresh Paint on Windows 8 touch screen machines. Note that keynotes start earlier this year, so you’ll want to show up early. I look forward to seeing you there.

By Adrienne Hall, general manager, Trustworthy Computing, Microsoft

Today at RSA I’m attending the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) summit where Scott Charney, corporate vice president of Trustworthy Computing, just received the CSA Industry Leadership award. For background, Scott is the leader of Trustworthy Computing, where his responsibilities include security strategy at Microsoft and the extension of solutions more broadly across the IT industry such as the Security Development Lifecycle.. Scott’s award recognizes his many contributions in the field of Security and his early engagement discussing security research and best practices for customers during the CSAs early days. Recently, Microsoft became the first major provider to complete a CSA STAR entry, which allows potential cloud customers to review the security practices of providers. 

 
Tomorrow morning Scott will present an RSA keynote entitled: Making a Case for Security Optimism. He will share key security industry accomplishments that will have long-term impact and together form a basis for optimism. On Wednesday night, we’re looking forward to hosting what will be  a great industry appreciation party and on Thursday morning Jeff Jones and Tim Rains on my team will present on the global threat landscape in a Security Intelligence Report (SIR) session. Jeff recommends, in his post, a few Microsoft sessions to attend during RSA and throughout the week he’ll report on our daily experiences at the show. This is already proving to be an exciting week here at RSA!

By Jeff Jones, director, Trustworthy Computing

With the RSA conference 2013 next week, I wanted to share a few details about Microsoft’s keynote and sessions. On Tuesday morning, Scott Charney, vice president of Trustworthy Computing, will keynote a session entitled: Making a Case for Security Optimism.  Scott will share his views on key industry accomplishments that will have a long term impact on the industry and thus form a basis for security optimism in the future.  Microsoft will be participating in thirteen security and privacy sessions this year and here’s below a few RSA sessions I recommend you attend. Of course you should plan to attend my session with colleague Tim Rains as we share the latest Security Intelligence Report (SIR) findings on the global threat landscape. We look forward to seeing you there.

Posted by Jacqueline Beauchere, director, Trustworthy Computing, Microsoft

As online meanness and cruelty continue to garner global attention, parents, educators, and school officials grow hungrier for new information and guidance. All are looking to formulate and implement strategies and policies that will help protect young people both online and off. A recent report from more than a dozen leading academics from 11 countries offers additional considerations and recommendations.

The group, made up of academics from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Norway, Portugal, and Sweden, reviewed and scored, over four years, 54 national guidelines on online bullying from 27 countries. The ratings were based on the presence or absence of a range of criteria with the aim of “share[ing] expertise on cyber-bullying in educational settings … moving towards a common set of guidelines applicable in Europe.”

The research-evidence review covered four target groups: young people, parents, schools, and teachers, highlighting strengths and weakness of each of the guidelines, concluding with recommendations. For instance, the authors note that many of the national guidelines noted the need for parents to serve as role models; to speak proactively to their children about online risks, and to monitor children’s use of technology. Many also mentioned that parents need to develop their own technology skills. Yet, far fewer guidelines called on parents to encourage their children to help others, or focused on the importance of working closely with a child’s school, should an issue arise.

By Jeff Jones, director, Trustworthy Computing

With RSA just two weeks away, I wanted to cordially invite you to our Microsoft Industry Appreciation party 8 pm to midnight, on Tuesday, February 26 at Ruby Skye in San Franciso. We had an amazing party last year and this one is not to be missed! Passes are limited and they are required to attend. At RSA in Moscone Center, come by our Microsoft booth #1616 during open Exhibit Hall hours on Monday, 6-8 pm or Tuesday, 11 am to 6 pm. More details follow below. See you there!

By Paul Nicholas, senior director Security, Trustworthy Computing

Have you ever wondered what factors contribute to how well a country or region is addressing cybersecurity issues?  Today, I have the pleasure of presenting alongside my colleague, Kevin Sullivan at George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute in Washington DC on exactly that topic. During the lecture we will discuss key findings from a new special edition of our Microsoft Security Intelligence Report that focuses on “Measuring the Impact of Policy on Global Cybersecurity”.

This new report takes a look at cybersecurity in a world where the demographic of the internet is rapidly changing. Current projections indicate that internet users will double by 2020 to four billion worldwide, with large populations of users located in China, India and Africa. This change, coupled with a consistently evolving cybersecurity threat landscape will require governments around the world to look more broadly than ever before to understand the impact of the decisions that are being made today.

By: Brendon Lynch, Chief Privacy Officer

Each year, Data Privacy Day (DPD) provides an opportunity to pause and take stock of we all accomplish through our longstanding privacy program and how we can continue to evolve our efforts.  I’m proud of our dedicated group of privacy professionals who work diligently every day to help protect customers’ privacy as we deliver new innovations, and our use of DPD to drive awareness among all Microsoft employees about our comprehensive approach to privacy.

I want to provide a quick look back at what we did to mark DPD 2013:
• We commissioned new research to better understand people’s online privacy perceptions and expectations.  The results showed that people need more help controlling their personal information online and led us to introduce a new resource that does just that: microsoft.com/yourprivacy.  Here, consumers can find a new video series called “Privacy in Action.” These videos illustrate many of the privacy options available in our products, and we’ll continue to update this series.

David Bills, chief reliability strategist, Trustworthy Computing

The complex nature of cloud computing means that as cloud service providers, we need to be mindful that things will go wrong – it’s not a case of if, it’s strictly a matter of when. Cloud providers need to design and build their services in such a way to maximize the reliability of the service and minimize the impact to customers when things do go wrong. A key facet of this approach is business continuity, or ensuring that critical business functions continue to be available, even in the event of a catastrophe. With that in mind, I was recently interviewed for the winter edition of the Disaster Recovery Journal – a journal which focuses on the business continuity planning profession

When I talk about reliability I’m referring to the outcome all service providers aim for. The notion that the service works as it was designed to, and responds in a predicable fashion when it is needed. One way to improve reliability is to build a service that is resilient – it has the ability to withstand certain types of failure and yet remain fully functional from the customers’ perspective.