Microsoft was once the epitome of everything wrong with security in technology. Its products were so infested with vulnerabilities that the company’s co-founder, Bill Gates, once ordered all of Microsoft engineers to stop writing new code for a month and focus on fixing the bugs in software they had already built.But in recent years, Microsoft has cleaned up its act, even impressing security specialists like Mikko Hypponen, the chief research officer for F-Secure, a Finnish security company, who used to cringe at Microsoft’s practices.”They’ve changed themselves from worst in class to the best in class,” Mr. Hypponen said. “The change is complete. They started taking security very seriously.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/18/technology/microsoft-once-infested-with-security-flaws-does-an-about-face.htmlAlso see:Microsoft’s Biggest Contribution to Security Is Free Windows Upgrades
Microsoft Corp. CEO Satya Nadella on Tuesday described his company’s bold moves to protect Windows users from digital security threats. But the company has already made its most significant contribution to cyber security: free Windows 10 upgrades.”2015 has been a tough year around cyber security,” Mr. Nadella told customers at the annual Microsoft Government Cloud Forum in Washnigton, DC. “Just the top eight or so data breaches have led to 160 million data records being compromised,” contributing to a $3 trillion drain on the global economy, he said.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/11/17/microsofts-biggest-contribution-to-security-is-free-windows-upgrades/Microsoft gets serious about security as Apple eyes the enterprise market
In the mid-2000s, Microsoft’s security reputation was so bad that Apple made fun of it in TV commercials.”You okay?” a casually dressed Justin Long, representing a Mac, asked a sneezing, suited PC stand-in John Hodgman in one spot.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/17/microsoft-gets-serious-about-security-as-apple-eyes-the-enterprise-market/