Microsoft: The Internet Needs More Trust for growth

The Internet needs to be more trustworthy if it wants to grow, according to Microsoft's senior security executive, Scott Charney.

In a video posted to Microsoft's Web site ahead of Charney's keynote at next week's RSA security conference, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Trustworthy Computing described how anonymity on the Internet is increasingly being exploited by cyber criminals. "We need to push back on anonymity and lack of traceability," he said.

"Because the Internet can be anonymous and untraceable, criminals flock to the Internet," Charney explained. "Today too many people do not know what software is running on their machine and often they have malware. They often don't know who they're communicating with, whether an e-mail they've received is spoofed or from some unknown sender even when it appears to come from someone they know. When they visit Web sites, they don't know if that Web site is to be trusted or not."

"For all of these reasons we need End-to-End Trust," Charney said.

End-to-End Trust is a security marketing initiative introduced by Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie at last year's RSA conference. Keynoting next Tuesday, Charney is expected to give an update on the initiative, which the company has thusfar billed as an effort to engage industry, consumers and policy makers in a serious discussion of online security problems. His video was posted this week on a revamped version of Microsoft's End-to-End Trust Web site.

As the world's dominant supplier of software, Microsoft is constantly in the crosshairs of attackers. Even as the company has taken steps to lock down its flagship Windows operating system, hackers have exploited countless flaws in the programs that run on top of it, such as Office and Internet Explorer.

Microsoft would like to give its users a better idea of whether a Web site or e-mail attachment is trustworthy. But how you identify people on the Internet without raising serious privacy concerns? It's a problem that Microsoft hopes to solve first by engaging in discussion.

"We've been talking about this since last year, spending a lot of time with the policy makers," said Doug Leland, general manager of Microsoft's Identity and Security Business Group, in an interview. "This is an agenda we're trying to advance with the reset of the industry and with policy makers and lawmakers and law enforcement as a proposal of a solution to tackle a very significant problem."

Last September, for example, Microsoft made a submission to the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a group looking at ways to improve online safety for children. Microsoft's paper (pdf) advocated the replacement of Web user names and passwords with Information Card systems, such as Microsoft's own CardSpace technology, and calling on a collaboration between government, industry and child development experts to solve the problem.

Microsoft has been working with a number of countries, including Singapore, Belgium, the U.K. and France to develop government-issued digital credentials, Leland said.

In his video, Charney called for a "model where people get in-person proof and then can pass digital identities on the Internet. So, for example, if you got a drivers license or a passport and it also had a digital certificate on it, you could later pass your identity to a site along with your credit card number for example and they would know you are who you claim to be."

But Microsoft doesn't think these digital IDs should be mandatory.

In December, Charney sent a letter to the Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Roy Cooper of North Carolina arguing that any move toward mandatory digital IDs "would not only compromise privacy but would have a chilling effect on other important social values such as freedom of expression."

Instead of centralized digital IDs, Microsoft is pushing a concept known as federated identity, where different organizations develop ways to share and trust identity information about their users. With CardSpace, Microsoft has been careful to give users the ability to decide what information they want to share.

"The way in which Microsoft has been thinking about it has been very constructive," said John Palfrey, a co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center, which published the Internet Safety Task Force report. "They would leave all or virtually all of the decision making in the hand of the users."

Charney's RSA keynote, entitled "End to End Trust: A Collaborative Effort" is set to be delivered Tuesday morning. RSA runs at San Francisco's Moscone Center from Monday to Friday next week.

[read more : http://www.pcworld.com/article/163311/microsoft_the_internet_needs_more_trust_to_grow.html?tk=rss_news]

Yahoo Google search advertising deal

This, i guess was always in the offing. Just read an article in NYtimes.com on a proposed Google Yahoo deal for search advertising. It may be a way to fend of Microsoft bids for Yahoo, but it sure does raise many questions pertaining to Anti Trust issues and also an apprehension over the Yahoo - Live.com search sponsored results ie. yahoo's ads on Live.com.

Google Inc.'s top executives expressed hope Thursday that the Internet search leader will be able to form a potentially lucrative advertising partnership with Yahoo Inc.

"We have been talking to Yahoo and we are very excited to be working with them," said Google co-founder, Sergey Brin. ''We share a lot of values with them.''

Neither Brin nor Google Chairman Eric Schmidt mentioned how far along the two sides are in their negotiations after a two-week test which was completed last month. During the trial run, Google supplied a small portion of the text-based ads that appeared alongside the search results on Yahoo's Web site.

Because Google's technology proved it, the alliance could help Yahoo snap out of a prolonged slump that made it vulnerable to Microsoft's buyout bid. Microsoft also cited Yahoo's willingness to subordinate its own ad system to Google's as a reason for dropping its bid.

"We really believe in companies having choices about their destinies," Brin said. "It's not about scuttling (the deal). They were under a hostile attack and we wanted to make sure they had as many options as possible."

Schmidt left little doubt that Google was pleased to ruin the deal. However, he said he wanted to keep Yahoo out of Microsoft's hands largely because he was concerned the world's largest software maker would abuse the added power.

Schmidt described Google's current relationship with Yahoo as "very, very friendly."

If Yahoo were to sign a long-term ad deal with Google, some analysts believe that would repel Microsoft for good. Although Microsoft executives have publicly indicated they are looking for other ways to bolster the software maker's unprofitable Internet operations.

This partnership almost certainly would face intense antitrust scrutiny as the two companies together control more than 80 % of the U.S. market for online search advertising.

"If there were a deal (with Yahoo), we would anticipate structuring the deal to address the antitrust concerns that have been widely discussed," Schmidt said.

Although Schmidt wouldn't specify how Google will address the antitrust issues, analysts speculate, that it could be done by running the partnership as an auction-style system that would allow other rivals, to show ads on Yahoo.

Google shareholders attending Thursday's meeting didn't seem to care about the implications of a potential Yahoo partnership.

Now i wonder what is brewing in the the Silicon valley.