Microsoft's Charney gets serious about security

Microsoft's chief trustworthy computing strategist, Charney underscored the need for the software maker to clearly outline its plans and get partners and customers onboard for its security efforts to work.

"As a leading player in the IT ecosystem, we're required to go out and talk about what were doing," Charney said.

In addition to working on building more secure products by design, promoting security training and development and easing patch management, the company is partnering with hardware makers and security companies, Charney said.

The company will team with Dell to provide a single tool for updating hardware and software and the release of a public beta of Windows Update Services to help administrators automate and control software updates are recent examples of these efforts, he added.

Charney's message seemed to resonate with at least some of the 3,000 forum attendees, who had been looking for evidence that a change in the industry's security approach was afoot.

"It was really refreshing to hear a Microsoft executive speak with no marketing slides. It gave me the impression that security is actually a top concern," said Copenhagen-based IT consultant Erik Trudso Jespersen.

Indeed, Charney portrayed security as his mandate, saying that when government initially ceded the internet and computers to the public domain, it also gave away its role as protector.

"Essentially what the government did was give public security and national security to the market," Charney said.