Have you had enough with cleaning up your Windows OS after some security exploit?
Tired of hearing gripes from your users, proclaiming that all they did was surf what they thought was a perfectly innocent Web site before their PC crashed and burned?
So why can’t Microsoft make a more secure version of Windows to protect us all from these situations?
Give them points for trying: At least Vista and IE v7 attempt to lock things down more than what was possible with XP, something that’s finding lots of appeal with IT managers who are considering these upgrades.
But still. Look at what Microsoft did with Vista’s firewall. The firewall available on XP (and only with Service Pack 2) didn’t block outbound connections, which made it easier for the bad guys to turn your PC into a spam-creating zombie.
Vista includes this ability, but it’s so difficult to set up and too obscure to configure that you’re still better off with a third-party firewall.
Just think of the entire software infrastructure Microsoft could eliminate overnight if Windows were more resilient. Anti-spyware, antivirus, personal firewall, anti-phishing tools would all be unnecessary. Nice to dream about, even for just a moment.
Instead, the harsh reality is that corporate IT managers have had to develop elaborate schemes for locking down their Windows desktops, eliminating security weaknesses and curtailing numerous options that are part of the Windows OS.
Too bad there isn’t a more secure desktop OS readily available.
Actually, I was just playing. I can think of two secure desktop Operating System’s right off the top of my head:
- Fedora OS (Linux-based)
- Macintosh OS X (based on FreeBSD UNIX)
Too bad that most corporate IT shops can’t use them for their bread-and-butter applications. One day my friends, one day.
