Category: Product

The final version of Longhorn is slated for the second half of next year.

“There will be a beta 1 of Longhorn… happening in the first half of this year,” John Montgomery, a director in Microsoft’s developer division, said during an interview at VSLive, a conference devoted to the company’s Visual Studio .Net toolkit.

The release will be primarily aimed at developers, Montgomery said. “I do, however, expect that you will find IT departments starting to look at it, kick the tires, figure out what’s in it and what’s not in it.”

Beta 1 will be the first look at Longhorn in its current form. Microsoft released a developer preview version of Windows at the Professional Developers Conference in the fall of 2003 and updated that early code last spring. However, Longhorn has changed significantly since then, with Microsoft announcing changes in August affecting all three of the key pillars of Longhorn.

Two of the components — a presentation engine called Avalon and a Web services architecture called Indigo — are being pulled out of the next Windows release so they can be offered for both Longhorn and the current generation of Windows operating systems. The third major component, a reworking of the Windows file system known as WinFS, has been delayed past Longhorn’s release and is expected to be in beta testing when Longhorn ships. It is unclear when WinFS will be integrated into Windows itself.

Microsoft has not talked a great deal about what features will be part of the beta release. Montgomery said many of the updates have to do with improving the “operational characteristics” of the operating system — basically an effort to make Windows easier to manage and more reliable.

Among the changes will be a new model for drivers.

Another improvement will come in the way businesses are able to install Windows on large numbers of machines. Today, mass deployment is done through a process known as “ghosting” an image of the operating system. An improved method will come with Longhorn, Montgomery said.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020396,39187091,00.htm

The company is set to post for download the new “Release Candidate 2” (RC2) beta builds of SP1 and its x64 editions, company officials confirmed.

Some industry watchers have pegged April as the likely final delivery date, since that is when Microsoft will be holding its annual Windows Hardware Engineering (WinHEC) conference.

“The difference between RC1 and RC2 really is one of increased robustness as Microsoft prepares for the final RTM,” or release to manufacturing, a company spokeswoman said. “This change was made based on feedback that the link was difficult to find in RC1,” the spokeswoman added.

Microsoft is making the RC2 releases available to members of the Microsoft technical beta program. The company also is making the code for Windows XP Professional X64 edition available to some customer testers, via the company’s Customer Preview Program.

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1762756,00.asp?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535

The software then automatically correlates and analyzes the information in real time and produces a consolidated report for the information security manager.

The release will mark Check Point’s entry into the nascent market for products that help administrators monitor network events, such as log-ins, and be able to respond quickly to perceived security threats.

Analysts noted it’s a market that has only recently gained significant customer attention in the past year or two. “They’re just a little late to the game, but not too late,” said Steve Hunt, a security industry analyst. Burton said Eventia Analyzer has a bank of 70 predefined problems that make it easier to detect security shortfalls, meaning managers have less need to customize the system. It enables information security managers to follow its recommendations, or can automatically take steps to resolve any problem, he said.

Security event management is a relatively small market that’s expected to grow to roughly $300,000 this year, analyst Hunt said. And while the industry is expected to generate steady growth, no large growth spikes are anticipated, he added. “Security event management products are just one piece of the problem that customers are trying to resolve,” he said. “A security manager has to buy eight other products to go along with it, from asset management technology to patch management technology to policy configuration management.” The security event management industry will likely see its growth come from a consolidation of all related products into one integrated offering, Hunt predicted.

Eventia Analyzer software licenses are expected to cost $1,000 per device. It is scheduled to begin shipping in March.

On Monday, Check Point also plans to announce an upgrade to its Integrity PC firewall software. Version 6.0 will feature a subscription service to control which applications can access the network from a PC, said Rich Weiss, Check Point’s director of end-point marketing. Integrity 6.0 will also feature server-clustering technology and intrusion-prevention services at the PC level to block attacks, Weiss said.

Security holds its spot among the top IT initiatives at number three, increasingly paying more attention to spyware.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5564185.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnet

The Symantec Mail Security 8000 line confirms what security insiders have known for years — email is one of the most open gateways to any organization — something Symantec intends to fix. The Mail Security 8000 appliance line is Symantec’s first appliance, however Symantec has worked closely with other companies such as IronPort — which licenses Symantec’s Brightmail AntiSpam engine and AntiVirus engine for its C-series appliances.

The only product in the 8100 line initially will be the 8160 appliance, which will retail for $4,995.

“The 8200 series will spot 95 percent of the spam at the gateway and deliver only one false positive per one million e-mails,” said Daniel Freeman, Symantec’s secure e-mail solutions product manager.

The first model, the 8240, is designed for medium sized companies of less than a thousand employees.

http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=540

Software maker Vontu introduced version 4.0 of its Vontu gateway, which sits on a network and monitors the content of email and instant messages. The San Francisco-based company said the product will stop emails that violate security policies from being sent. “The ability to block the leaks of sensitive or confidential business information is of tremendous benefit and value to those individuals charged with minimizing data security and privacy risks,” said Larry Ponemon, head of the Tuscon, Arizona, think tank the Ponemon Institute.

For years, companies have focused security efforts on keeping hackers out of their networks. A new breed of companies such as Vontu and its rival Vericept have built data interception products that monitor email, instant messages, FTP files and other electronic communications on corporate networks, sniffing for leaks of sensitive information. It does nothing to prevent a partner or a disgruntled employee from downloading information onto a data stick via a USB port or printing the information and walking out the door with it.

Vontu CEO Joseph Ansanelli said that the new release is intended to avert such breaches, but noted that such data interception products are only a small piece of the overall solution for businesses. “With every release of our product, we’re taking steps to increase that protection. I think the market will evolve very much like the firewall market did. First, you had gateway products protecting the perimeter, and now you have personal firewalls sitting on desktops.”

There is one drawback: Because the Vontu product sits within the data path, monitoring and making decisions on traffic in real time, network performance suffers slightly, Ansanelli said.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39185435,00.htm

SiteDigger 2.0, delivered on Monday, looks for information about a Web site’s security by sending specific queries to Google’s Web database. Known as Google hacking, such searches can turn up easily exploitable flaws and sensitive information, including credit card numbers and user account information. The free service should help Webmasters stay informed about what information is out there regarding their sites, said Chris Prosise, vice-president of worldwide professional services for security technology company McAfee.

“We built this tool really as an awareness tool,” Prosise said, adding that SiteDigger highlights problems that Webmasters might otherwise not know about. “As a victim, you would never really know that someone was using this information.”

SiteDigger does not discern whether the person using it is an authorised administrator of the site or a potential attacker looking for weaknesses.

Prosise agreed that this means the tool could be used against a site, but pointed out that Google requires that any user of an automated service sign up with its Web services development programme.

Recently, the Santy worm used Google queries to find potentially vulnerable computers, which the program would then try to infect with its code.

Several other tools have been created by other research groups to comb for flaws using Google’s database.

Google could not immediately be reached for comment on SiteDigger.

Johnny Long, a senior engineer at Computer Sciences Corp. and author of the book Google Hacking for Penetration Testers, said such tools are necessary for Web administrators to keep their sites safe. “There is no way for a security team to stay on top of Google without automation,” he said. “They can’t spend all the time trolling through Google.” Long maintains a site of more than 800 signatures of common security problems that can be searched for with Google.

SiteDigger and other tools use the signatures to query the search engine for the problems. While stressing that SiteDigger benefits Web sites with knowledgeable security personnel — usually the larger sites — Long acknowledged that smaller, less security-conscious sites would likely be at a disadvantage against potential attackers. Such sites typically aren’t aware of the threats posed by Google hacking. “The little guys are going to lose whenever a new tool comes out,” he said. “The smaller site you are, the more you have to worry about.”

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/networks/0,39020345,39183591,00.htm