Knowing that third party vendors of personal firewalls such as Zone Labs and Sygate may need some time to support the interface, Microsoft jerry-rigged a connection between the Security Center and most of the popular third party security products - a sign of the lengths to which Microsoft will go to deputise customers in the battle against hackers. During a video interview, Microsoft spokesperson Greg Sullivan said that "WMI is used mostly by IT managers to enforce policies broadly across their domains." But, as it turns out, the API is flexible enough that it can be used to interrogate the status of firewall and anti-virus products as long as the developers of those products support that sort of WMI-based interrogation.
ZONE ALARM PRO 2007 WINDOWS
The security dashboard is less of an innovation than it is the re-use of an existing Windows API known as the Windows Management Interface (WMI). Barring any known compatability problems between SP2 and your company's computing infrastructure (like that which has been reported to have occurred at IBM), this feature alone makes SP2 worth the upgrade. Until SP2, users could never go to one central location to get an easily scannable status report on their systems' readiness to deal with the most prevalent threats.
ZONE ALARM PRO 2007 UPDATE
Today, Windows will tell us that critical updates are waiting to be downloaded through an indicator that pops up from the Windows tray, or following a "scan for updates" that takes place after Windows Update is manually invoked. This simple status report on your system's defenses answers such basic questions as whether your firewall and anti-virus systems are turned on, whether your anti-virus solution is using the most recent signature file, and whether your operating system has received all available critical updates. Commentary With Microsoft having released Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) to manufacturing, the technology that some have nicknamed "Security Pack 2," coupled with recent rumblings from Microsoft, are spinning the spotlight towards the personal firewall and anti-virus sectors.įor starters, after installing SP2, users of XP will notice the addition of a security dashboard to Windows' Control Panel known as the Security Center.
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