Microsoft Antigen (Antivirus) Announcement

In response to the previous blog post, here is the update on the security strategy.

Today in Munich, Germany, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp.’s chief executive officer, and Mike Nash, corporate vice president of the Security Technology Unit, outlined Microsoft’s companywide strategy and product road map for helping secure the breadth of its customers from home PC users to businesses of all sizes. As part of its comprehensive security strategy, which focuses on a defense-in-depth approach, Ballmer announced Microsoft’s plans to release Microsoft® Client Protection, a solution to help protect business desktops, laptops and file servers from current and emerging malware threats. In addition, the company announced the creation of the SecureIT Alliance, which will further enable participating security partners to efficiently integrate their solutions with the Microsoft platform to build new security features and products for the benefit of their common customers.

Since I know most of you tend to skip over big paragraphs of text: Microsoft is releasing Microsoft Antigen, software Microsoft acquired by purchasing Sybari. Thats all there is to it, the new “security” strategy is basically Microsoft officially announcing the entry into the antivirus game.

Update: Paul Bryan, product management director in the enterprise security division at Microsoft: This will essentially be an enterprise of Windows OneCare. That service is expected to include antivirus, anti-spyware and malware protection, as well as computer tune-up and backup functionality when it launches sometime next year.