This is the e-mail Bill Gates sent to every full-time employee at
Microsoft, in which he describes the company's new strategy emphasizing
security in its products.
From: Bill Gates
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 5:22 PM
To: Microsoft and Subsidiaries: All FTE
Subject: Trustworthy computing
Every few years I have sent out a memo talking about the highest
priority for Microsoft. Two years ago, it was the kickoff of our .NET
strategy. Before that, it was several memos about the importance of the
Internet to our future and the ways we could make the Internet truly
useful for people. Over the last year it has become clear that ensuring
.NET is a platform for Trustworthy Computing is more important than any
other part of our work. If we don't do this, people simply won't be
willing -- or able -- to take advantage of all the other great work we
do. Trustworthy Computing is the highest priority for all the work we
are doing. We must lead the industry to a whole new level of
Trustworthiness in computing.
When we started work
on Microsoft .NET more than two years ago, we set a new direction for
the company -- and articulated a new way to think about our software.
Rather than developing standalone applications and Web sites, today
we're moving towards smart clients with rich user interfaces interacting
with Web services. We're driving the XML Web services standards so that
systems from all vendors can share information, while working to make
Windows the best client and server for this new era.
There is a
lot of excitement about what this architecture makes possible. It
allows the dreams about e-business that have been hyped over the last
few years to become a reality. It enables people to collaborate in new
ways, including how they read, communicate, share annotations, analyze
information and meet.
However, even more important than any of
these new capabilities is the fact that it is designed from the ground
up to deliver Trustworthy Computing. What I mean by this is that
customers will always be able to rely on these systems to be available
and to secure their information. Trustworthy Computing is computing that
is as available, reliable and secure as electricity, water services and
telephony.
Today, in the developed world, we do not worry
about electricity and water services being available. With telephony, we
rely both on its availability and its security for conducting highly
confidential business transactions without worrying that information
about who we call or what we say will be compromised. Computing falls
well short of this, ranging from the individual user who isn't willing
to add a new application because it might destabilize their system, to a
corporation that moves slowly to embrace e-business because today's
platforms don't make the grade.
The events of last year -- from
September's terrorist attacks to a number of malicious and highly
publicized computer viruses -- reminded every one of us how important it
is to ensure the integrity and security of our critical infrastructure,
whether it's the airlines or computer systems.
Computing is
already an important part of many people's lives. Within 10 years, it
will be an integral and indispensable part of almost everything we do.
Microsoft and the computer industry will only succeed in that world if
CIOs, consumers and everyone else sees that Microsoft has created a
platform for Trustworthy Computing.
Every week there are
reports of newly discovered security problems in all kinds of software,
from individual applications and services to Windows, Linux, Unix and
other platforms. We have done a great job of having teams work around
the clock to deliver security fixes for any problems that arise. Our
responsiveness has been unmatched -- but as an industry leader we can
and must do better. Our new design approaches need to dramatically
reduce the number of such issues that come up in the software that
Microsoft, its partners and its customers create. We need to make it
automatic for customers to get the benefits of these fixes. Eventually,
our software should be so fundamentally secure that customers never even
worry about it.
No Trustworthy Computing platform exists
today. It is only in the context of the basic redesign we have done
around .NET that we can achieve this. The key design decisions we made
around .NET include the advances we need to deliver on this vision.
Visual Studio .NET is the first multi-language tool that is optimized
for the creation of secure code, so it is a key foundation element.
I've spent the past few months working with Craig Mundie's group and
others across the company to define what achieving Trustworthy Computing
will entail, and to focus our efforts on building trust into every one
of our products and services. Key aspects include:
Availability: Our products should always be available when our customers
need them. System outages should become a thing of the past because of a
software architecture that supports redundancy and automatic recovery.
Self-management should allow for service resumption without user
intervention in almost every case.
Security: The data our
software and services store on behalf of our customers should be
protected from harm and used or modified only in appropriate ways.
Security models should be easy for developers to understand and build
into their applications.
Privacy: Users should be in control of
how their data is used. Policies for information use should be clear to
the user. Users should be in control of when and if they receive
information to make best use of their time. It should be easy for users
to specify appropriate use of their information including controlling
the use of email they send.
Trustworthiness is a much broader
concept than security, and winning our customers' trust involves more
than just fixing bugs and achieving "five-nines" availability. It's a
fundamental challenge that spans the entire computing ecosystem, from
individual chips all the way to global Internet services. It's about
smart software, services and industry-wide cooperation.
There
are many changes Microsoft needs to make as a company to ensure and keep
our customers' trust at every level -- from the way we develop
software, to our support efforts, to our operational and business
practices. As software has become ever more complex, interdependent and
interconnected, our reputation as a company has in turn become more
vulnerable. Flaws in a single Microsoft product, service or policy not
only affect the quality of our platform and services overall, but also
our customers' view of us as a company.
In recent months, we've
stepped up programs and services that help us create better software and
increase security for our customers. Last fall, we launched the
Strategic Technology Protection Program, making software like IIS and
Windows .NET Server secure by default, and educating our customers on
how to get -- and stay -- secure. The error-reporting features built
into Office XP and Windows XP are giving us a clear view of how to raise
the level of reliability. The Office team is focused on training and
processes that will anticipate and prevent security problems.
In
December, the Visual Studio .NET team conducted a comprehensive review
of every aspect of their product for potential security issues. We will
be conducting similarly intensive reviews in the Windows division and
throughout the company in the coming months.
At the same time,
we're in the process of training all our developers in the latest secure
coding techniques. We've also published books like
Writing Secure Code,
by Michael Howard and David LeBlanc, which gives all developers the
tools they need to build secure software from the ground up. In
addition, we must have even more highly trained sales, service and
support people, along with offerings such as security assessments and
broad security solutions. I encourage everyone at Microsoft to look at
what we've done so far and think about how they can contribute.
But we need to go much further.
In the past, we've made our software and services more compelling for
users by adding new features and functionality, and by making our
platform richly extensible. We've done a terrific job at that, but all
those great features won't matter unless customers trust our software.
So now, when we face a choice between adding features and resolving
security issues, we need to choose security. Our products should
emphasize security right out of the box, and we must constantly refine
and improve that security as threats evolve. A good example of this is
the changes we made in Outlook to avoid e-mail-borne viruses. If we
discover a risk that a feature could compromise someone's privacy, that
problem gets solved first. If there is any way we can better protect
important data and minimize downtime, we should focus on this. These
principles should apply at every stage of the development cycle of every
kind of software we create, from operating systems and desktop
applications to global Web services.
Going forward, we must
develop technologies and policies that help businesses better manage
ever larger networks of PCs, servers and other intelligent devices,
knowing that their critical business systems are safe from harm. Systems
will have to become self-managing and inherently resilient. We need to
prepare now for the kind of software that will make this happen, and we
must be the kind of company that people can rely on to deliver it.
This priority touches on all the software work we do. By delivering on
Trustworthy Computing, customers will get dramatically more value out of
our advances than they have in the past. The challenge here is one that
Microsoft is uniquely suited to solve.
More discussion of our vision for Trustworthy Computing is in the internal white paper.
Bill
Copy from
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2002/01/49826
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