Now that the long-awaited next version of Windows is in customers" hands, officials at Microsoft Corp. are bracing themselves for what they know is coming: vulnerability reports, bug alerts and all manner of other security-related issues. These problems are as inevitable as the sunrise, but Microsoft security personnel believe Windows Server 2003 is the most secure and reliable operating system the company has ever produced.
The final verdict on that belief is years away, but the early returns should be back within a matter of months thanks to an eager crowd of crackers salivating at the prospect of poking and prodding the new operating system.
The game is on.
"I am felling pretty good about it," said Steve Lipner, director of security assurance at the Microsoft Security Response Center in Redmond, Wash. "This is the culmination of a lot of security work that we all did. Personally, this is the product that I worked most closely on because of the security push. There"s a lot of enthusiasm in the company around this and a lot of its due to the security aspect of it."