Ballmer Talks About Vista Security
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke on Wednesday at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. He covered a number of topics and one stuck out prominently. The security concerns for Windows: Vista have been paramount in discussions because various versions of Windows have been brutally attacked by hackers all over the world for years. Microsoft is intimately aware of problems with security in its software. They release security updates every month. Back in August, they released an update and those not able to install the patch right away paid dearly as worms proceeded to wiggle and create myriad problems.
It's no great secret Microsoft had to make adjustments in the release schedule of Windows: Vista because it was oirginally slated to be out now. A big part of the delay was security. The size of the new version required a lot of code and lot of checks into the security issues for that code.
Ballmer points out some of those changes in his recent conversation Thomas Bittman at the symposium, "The changes we made to our development process are really all about security, reliability and quality. We were losing major cycle times essentially by not capturing security defects and quality defects early enough in our design cycle.
