End to End Trust from a positive viewpoint

Posted by Ken Y-N on April 22nd, 2008 at 01:25pm

I suppose many people would describe him as a Microsoft fanboy, due to a story posted by Jon Oltsik on news.com looking at Microsoft’s End to End Trust initiative.

This is a favourable but level-headed look at the previously-reported keynote from Craig Mundie at the RSA Conference 2008. The three key elements of this is a chain of trust, an identity model, and industry participation. Regarding identity, Mr Oltsik has this to say:

In today’s computing environment, you also have to consider device type (i.e., am I communicating via my PC, cell phone, or PDA?), location, and the user’s work and personal profile. Yes, this complicates things but there is no getting around the fact that I use the same laptop to do my job during the day and then bid on vintage Gretsch guitars at night.

One can argue that people shouldn’t be using company hardware for buying off eBay, but a freelancer may have his own portable that needs to connect to a work network, so third-party hardware needs to be managed through this and Trusted Computing Group initiatives.

A final interesting point is that up until now Microsoft keynotes have been product demostrations and slick video presentations, but here they get back to basics and focus on issues, not image.

Of course, no article favourable to Microsoft would be complete without a reply from the peanut gallery, and this story is no exception, so be sure to check out the published comment.

The full story may be found on news.com here.

Tags: microsoft

Under Advocacy+ End to End Trust Tags: microsoft