Windows 8 Security: Supporting User Confidence

Computing appliances should let users just use the device without having to having to “be careful” what they click on. Worse, “being careful” doesn’t even work anymore, as attackers have invaded nearly every aspect of digital life, and so could be lurking in search engine results, social networks, and even app stores. Windows 8 provides security features such as malware resistance, app isolation, and modernized access controls that defend against attacks by both technical and social means, giving the user the confidence to click what they want. Windows 8 can be used by any member of the family, and network administrators can confidently deploy Windows 8 to their users, without fearing that the user will be co-opted by attackers.

Crispin Cowan entered the security arena in 1998 at the Seventh USENIX Security Symposium with the StackGuard paper, which introduced stack canaries for buffer overflow protection, a technique now used on nearly all platforms. From 1999 to 2007 he was the founding CTO of Immunix, which was acquired by Novell in 2005 to incorporate AppArmor into SUSE Linux. Since 2008, Crispin has worked for Microsoft, continuing his work adding security value to existing operating systems, but now doing it for Windows. Crispin is especially interested in usable security and effective sandboxing, and so has contributed to improving usability in UAC and to building the app container feature to allow users to run Windows Store Apps with confidence. Crispin’s contribution to the upcoming Windows 8.1 has been enhancing the systematic security reviews to ensure that all Windows features ship with appropriate security considerations in mind. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario and a Master's in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo.