During the past 12 months as Microsoft's corporate vice president for security and technology, Kaplan has struggled to streamline and coordinate the company's fight against the flood of computer viruses, worms, data-mining spyware and back-door identity theft programs.
Ending Microsoft's long practice of releasing security patches seemingly willy-nilly, Kaplan instituted regular monthly maintenance releases. Further, more than 200 million Windows users have signed up for the company's "automatic update" service, allowing upgrades to occur silently, in the background.
In August, Microsoft released Windows XP Service Pack 2. It featured a raft of improvements, among them closure of security holes in the Windows operating system, Web browser and e-mail client. SP2 also offered a beefed-up firewall program and pop-up advertising blocker - all for free.
In the few months since, more than 130 million Windows users worldwide have downloaded the 80-megabyte file. "We now have the biggest ecosystem for increasing software quality in the world," Kaplan told those attending a Utah Information Technology Association luncheon Tuesday.
More recently, Microsoft has introduced anti-spam technologies for its Outlook, Outlook Express and popular Hotmail e-mail applications. "For those of you who have Hotmail, you may have noticed we have almost completely eradicated spam in the past 120 days," Kaplan said.
The new year could see even more ambitious security breakthroughs, he predicted.
Working in partnership with companies such as Cisco, Microsoft hopes its Network Access Protection initiative will stop hackers' attempts to plant spyware on unsuspecting corporate systems.
Future security programming could even replace the venerable password with encrypted access card readers, while checking individual work stations and remote laptops to make sure they are virus- and spyware-free and up to date on software upgrades.
But regardless of how advanced firewalls become, Kaplan said a critical "pillar" of any PC or network's security is the individual user.
He said 70 percent of computer users don't bother to renew their anti-virus subscriptions after the first year of use. And, despite mass publicity over the dangers of "phishing" - bogus e-mails, allegedly from banks or retailers, seeking private information - victims continue to be subject to credit and identity fraud.
"Part of [the solution] is to educate users and part of it is about technology," Kaplan said.
In addition to repeating advice to never give out account information, Social Security numbers or other personal data in response to e-mails, Microsoft is working on "Sender ID," in effect an e-mail version of telephone caller ID.
But in all that, the information technology industry must remember to make protection as seamless and easy to use as possible.
"Consumers don't care about security - they just want it to work," Kaplan said. "It has to be simple and fundamental to what we do."
bmims@sltrib.com
