Microsoft Privacy & Safety : Microsoft

Microsoft Launches New Online Safety Website for Web 2.0

Microsoft Privacy Team — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:30:00 GMT

Microsoft has been very active in providing online safety information for over a decade. Our newest effort is our redesigned Consumer Online Safety Education website at www.microsoft.com/protect . This site is designed for parents, caregivers, and educators...(read more)

Microsoft: minimum disclosure about minimum disclosure?

Microsoft Privacy Team — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:38:00 GMT

Microsoft's Kim Cameron on his Identity Blog: Back from vacation and catching up on some blogs I found this piece by Felix Gaehtgens at Kuppinger Cole in Germany: A good year ago, Microsoft acquired an innovative company called U-Prove. That company,...(read more)

Constructing an Information Age Model for Federal Cybersecurity

Microsoft Privacy Team — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:05:00 GMT

Today on the Microsoft on the Issues Blog : Posted by Scott Charney Corporate Vice President, Trustworthy Computing As I blogged last month , the increasing quantity and sophistication of cyber attacks requires a comprehensive and coordinated strategy...(read more)

Kim Cameron's Proposal for a Common Identity Framework

Microsoft Privacy Team — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:28:00 GMT

From Kim Cameron's blog : Today I am posting a new paper called, Proposal for a Common Identity Framework: A User-Centric Identity Metasystem . Good news: it doesn’t propose a new protocol! Instead, it attempts to crisply articulate the requirements in...(read more)

An Important Step in Advancing Cybersecurity

Microsoft Privacy Team — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:18:00 GMT

Posted by Scott Charney, on the Microsoft On the Issues Blog: Corporate Vice President, Trustworthy Computing Today I had the privilege of attending an event at the White House where President Barack Obama announced the results of the 60-day cybersecurity...(read more)

Peter Cullen talks privacy at the Churchill Club

Microsoft Privacy Team — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:52:00 GMT

Peter Cullen, Chief Privacy Strategist at Microsoft, spoke at a forum September 8, 2008 at the Churchill Club in California. During the forum, “Personalization versus Privacy: Balancing Business and Customer Interests,” Peter addressed how Microsoft builds privacy into Microsoft products.

Peter Cullen discusses building privacy into Microsoft products (4:41)

Peter Cullen talks about data retention, on the future of privacy (3:12)

-- David Burt

Digital Playgrounds presentation at the Berkman Center

Microsoft Privacy Team — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:01:00 GMT

Last week I presented the concepts from Microsoft's paper, "Digital Playgrounds: Creating Safer Online Environments for Children," at the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF) Open Meeting at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society in Cambridge, Mass.

The Digital Playgrounds paper outlines a framework that would enable the creation of optional online "walled gardens," specifically for children and trusted adults. These online sites would only be accessible by folks with trusted and age verified ‘digital identities.' This framework suggests achieving this by allowing trusted offline parties, who have the ability to meet with a parent and child in real life, examine the appropriate documents and then issue extremely secure digital identities based on these in in-person proofing moments. The framework we have outlined is largely a technical solution to the age verification challenge, but we believe that the nontechnical aspects of the problem will be as difficult to solve as the technical ones, if not more so. For example, government and industry will need to work together on designing the necessary criteria for in-person proofing events as well as the subsequent issuing, auditing and revoking of these digital identity cards.

My presentation was but one of a number of presentations over the day and half long meeting. Facebook, MySpace, VeriSign, and large number of other companies provided interesting solutions of their own to similar and related online safety challenges.

You can read our whole paper here: Digital Playgrounds: Creating Safer Online Environments for Children

The rest of the presentations are posted here.

--Jules Cohen

Welcome to The Data Privacy Imperative Blog!

Microsoft Privacy Team — Mon, 14 May 2007 15:02:00 GMT

Peter Cullen, Microsoft’s Chief Privacy Strategist, here ...

For more than a decade, Microsoft has had employees dedicated to advancing customer privacy priorities across the company, the industry and society. We now have more than 40 full-time privacy professionals across the company, as well as a few hundred more with privacy management as a formal part of their job responsibilities. I thought it is about time you heard directly from them (and me), and have the opportunity to engage in discussion with us on this increasingly important topic. In this blog, you can expect us to provide perspective on topical privacy issues, as well as information on particular aspects of Microsoft’s unique approach to addressing customer privacy.

Im-per-a-tive [noun]. Something that demands attention or action; an unavoidable obligation or requirement; necessity.

You may have noted the title of this blog uses the word ‘imperative’. Is privacy really an imperative? Yes, and here’s why:

Information technology has dramatically transformed how a large segment of the world’s population works, communicates, learns, shops and plays. Meanwhile, the Internet and increasingly powerful wireless and broadband technologies are carrying the benefits of the Web to virtually every corner of the world, helping to create new opportunities for millions of people and businesses in the global economy.

Yet, as advances in technology simplify and accelerate the flow of information, concerns about the collection and use of personal data, widely publicized security and data breaches, and growing alarm about online fraud and identity theft, threaten to erode public confidence in the computing ecosystem and digital commerce.

Global trends indicate a steady increase in crimes like identity theft and online phishing scams aimed at deceiving individuals into divulging their personal information. Microsoft’s Security Intelligence Report for the second half of 2006 shows that certain classes of spyware are evolving into more targeted and dangerous threats to privacy. For example, detections of remote control and monitoring software by Windows Defender, Microsoft’s anti-spyware client, were up 277 percent and 135 percent respectively between the first and second half of 2006. This type of software is used to commit data theft or to control large numbers of computer systems.

At the same time, studies worldwide show a decline in confidence that information shared online will remain both secure and private. In light of these developments, as well as an increasingly rigorous regulatory environment and the growing volume of personal information being collected by businesses and government, private and public sector organizations are beginning to understand that managing and helping protect people’s confidential data must be a top priority. For organizations , failing to prioritize privacy can prompt heavy financial losses, damage to reputations and loss of consumer and citizen trust.

Helping ensure privacy in today’s digital era is critical to the full realization of the social and economic benefits of technology and the Internet – simply put, it’s an imperative.

In the coming weeks and months you will hear from a range of Microsoft’s privacy professionals, and the occasional guest, on important matters relating to privacy. We look forward to your readership and participation. If you’d like to find out more about Microsoft’s privacy practices, solutions and engagement, I encourage you to visit our Web site and download our latest whitepaper, ‘The Data Privacy Imperative’.