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Trustworthy Computing: Examining Trust
3/11/2008
When Richard Kemmerer first joined the board of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory initiative as one of its inaugural members, he had a caveat for the software giant.
"One of the things I told (Microsoft) was that if you're looking for a yes man, you're barking up the wrong tree, looking in the wrong place, you got the wrong guy. I'm going to call it like I see it."
'Still a Long Way To Go'
Looking back over five years as a member of the panel, which is charged with, among other things, shoring up security, Kemmerer--who is currently a professor of computer science at University of California at Santa Barbara--said he still feels the same way in making what he calls a fair assessment of software and security personnel in Redmond. While he's swift to laud the accomplishments made with the project and with the evolution of Microsoft products and services, he said, "Where security is concerned, there is still a long way to go."
Indeed, as Microsoft celebrates half a decade of the program's existence calling upon expertise from Kemmerer and other scholars and experts from as far away as Tokyo and London, there remains a basic inconsistency between convenience of use and computer security that many believe can never be fully rectified. In the same way that a car alarm may lock a person out of a car for security reasons, Microsoft applications such as Internet Explorer have been known to inflict similar headaches on users recently. Additionally, some IT practitioners have suggested that Microsoft needs to help educate end users in a manner far more comprehensive than its monthly security bulletins.
To that end, Microsoft's position is that it's the IT community's job to stay on top of things and that the aim of the Trustworthy Computing movement is to gather the best objective research to achieve that goal.
"Organizations will need to continue to adapt their processes and technologies to effectively manage data protection as security and privacy threats continue to converge," said David Ladd, principal security program manager for Microsoft. "They will need to find ways for their privacy and security professionals to work together and work more closely with the parts of their organization that collect and use data."
In tandem with helping the software concern identify potential technical and policy hurdles that make security implementation an arduous task, Ladd said the board is doing "great work" to keep Redmond up to date on current and potential issues related to the abuse and theft of personally identifiable information. That said, even Ladd was willing to concede that security and reliability are a going concern, much in the way any business operation is.
"Since the formation of (the board) in February 2003, the group has provided Microsoft with a long-range, strategic international perspective and guidance about security and privacy trends," Ladd added. "They've done this with a focus on supporting Microsoft's efforts to better protect customers through investments in technology innovation and fundamentals, such as the
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