Day Three of the MVP Summit
Yawn... yawn... Yes, it was early when the alarm clock went off: 5:30AM. The bus left for the Microsoft Campus an hour later. Arrived there and had breakfast. This is always something special. Where in the world do you see such a group of people? There are about 1,700 people from all over the world and from so many different nationalities. All trying to speak the same language: English. One better than the other. But everyone tries to understand each other.
Today was a day full of interesting technical sessions. And fortunately everything is in the Auditorium at the Microsoft Conference Building. Including wireless Internet connection. Got there a little early and was welcomed by Camie Schwan, the World Wide MVP Product Group Community Lead. It was Camie who introduced every other speaker for the rest of the day.
The first session was the Executive Discussion and was presented by Lori Woehler. This was followed by a session about BitLocker Drive Encryption, by Russ Humphries, Senior Product Manager, Windows Vista Security. Interesting discussion and whether you should use the TPM + USB, USB only, TPM +Pin or TPM Only. For more information check out this article: BitLocker™ Drive Encryption and Disk Sanitation.
Before lunch it was time for Shawn Travers about wireless security. This was more a Q&A type of session and some very interesting questions were asked and answered.
The following session was the MSRC or PSS presnted by Mark Miller, Andrew Cushman and Mike Reavey. Again a Q&A type of session but they also told the audience what they're doing and what we would like to see changed. In general it was about:
- Security Bulletin Release Process
- Security Incident Response Process
The next speaker was Amith Krishnan about NAP, Network Access Protection. NAP is a new platform to perform computer health policy validation, ensure ongoing compliance with health policies, and optionally restrict the access of computers that do not comply with system health requirements until their health state can be corrected.
Then it was time for Jeff Jones, Director Microsoft Corporation, in his session about Security Compete. And in his presentation he showed us that Windows is more secure and the number of days before a patch is released is better than other OS manufacturers. For numbers and figures, see Jeff Jones Security Blog.
A new feature in Windows Vista is "Card Spaces" and this was the subject of the session by Nigel Watling. If you want to know something more about Card Spaces, then check out this web site: Get Started with CardSpace.
The last session was presented by Mark Russinovich, well known from the tools posted at Sysinternals. Mark had a very interesting discussion about the Vista User Account Control and why you should use it and not turn it off immediately. See also the Windows Sysinternals.