Microsoft Outlines Ongoing Security Efforts to Help Customers
| Archived content. No warranty is made as to technical accuracy. Content may contain URLs that were valid when originally published, but now link to sites or pages that no longer exist. |
Microsoft is committed to improving the patching experience for its customers, providing new security guidance, and developing new safety technologies to help make computers more resilient to attack, even when patches are not installed.
On October 9, 2003, Microsoft announced its plans to improve security for customers.
- For more information, please read the press release.
The security improvements will help customers by:
Improving the patching experience
In direct response to the feedback from many customers about patching tools and processes, Microsoft is extending security support for Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 and Windows NT 4.0 Workstation Service Pack 6a through June 2004. In addition, Microsoft will continue to improve patches and the patch deployment tools, and establish a new monthly patch release schedule.
Easier Security Notification Sign-up
Sign up for the free e-mail notification service that Microsoft uses to send information to customers about the security of Microsoft products. Registration has been streamlined to make it easier to start receiving this important service.
Support Life Cycle and Policies
Microsoft’s Support Life Cycle policy provides consistent and predictable guidelines for product support availability at the time of product release.
Providing security guidance
In direct response to feedback from our IT professional customers, Microsoft will publish guidance that is actionable and can be put to use immediately, instead of that which merely explains how a feature or technology works.
-
Check out some of the most prescriptive and authoritative guidance that Microsoft has provided for the defense of perimeters, networks, hosts, applications, and data.
-
Learn how to improve security, optimize your IT infrastructure, and participate with other IT pros on security topics.
-
Innovating on safety technologies for more resilient computers, even without patches
Software patching, edge firewalls and antivirus are critical to maintaining security, but more must to be done to help protect individual computers from malicious software. Computers need to be more resilient to attack, even when a patch has not been installed. Accomplishing this requires a new approach to complement patching—the deployment of safety technologies.