Microsoft Corp's announcement yesterday of its imminent entry into the personal firewall market was expected, but it is still concerning for some companies already playing in that space.
The company has been flagging up advanced firewall features of Windows XP Service Pack 2 for some time, and Bill Gates yesterday revealed some of the Windows Firewall features that will be turned on by default in the forthcoming release.
"SP2 is a release that's totally focused on security," he said. "And, in fact, today this is the primary focus of the Windows team...we prioritized resources and activities around what's an intermediate release under the name SP2, which is just security-oriented."
Gates, and product manager Zachary Gutt, highlighted three features of SP2 that are intended to improve endpoint security on Windows networks. The major one was Windows Firewall, previously known as Internet Connection Firewall.
This updated feature will be turned on by default. According to one beta tester, in corporate deployments it will be on by default but in a minimum-security mode, so as not to interfere with the use of internal network applications.
The beta tester pointed out that Microsoft is opening an API that allows other programs to turn the firewall off. Without precautions, such as requesting user confirmation, this could present a security risk when malicious hackers figure out the API.
http://www.cbronline.com/currentnews/a39f625f97026ca180256e45003860a0

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