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Perhaps no company in the industry is working harder than Microsoft at making sure the public knows what steps to take to secure its products.

If your servers aren't properly patched and your systems secured, it's getting harder and harder to blame Microsoft. Perhaps no company in the industry is working harder at making sure the public—both IT and at-large—knows what steps to take to secure its products.
One of the latest offerings is a monthly security newsletter, the first issue of which appeared last December. The newsletter is packed with relevant, crucial information. One example: A Q&A section asks the question "I received an e-mail telling me I should remove the Teddy Bear virus that is contained in a file named jdbgmgr.exe. Should I follow these instructions?" The file is a Microsoft java debugger file, and shouldn't be removed.

Another nifty section at the end of the newsletter details upcoming end-of-support dates for various products. For instance, support for a number of products still likely to be on many networks, including Access 97, Word 97, Excel 97 and Office 97, and FrontPage 98 and Outlook 98, had their support cut off just a few weeks ago, on Jan. 16.

News source: Mcpmag.com

Dave arrived and set his laptop up, an IBM ThinkPad A31. He didn't connect to the Internet - too dangerous, and against regulations, if I recall - but instead ran his presentation software using movies and videos where others would have actually gone online to demonstrate their points. While he was getting everything ready, I took a look at the first FBI agent I could remember meeting in person.

Dave had some surprises up his sleeve as well. You'll remember that I said he was using a ThinkPad (running Windows!). I asked him about that, and he told us that many of the computer security folks back at FBI HQ use Macs running OS X, since those machines can do just about anything: run software for Mac, Unix, or Windows, using either a GUI or the command line. And they're secure out of the box. In the field, however, they don't have as much money to spend, so they have to stretch their dollars by buying WinTel-based hardware. Are you listening, Apple? The FBI wants to buy your stuff. Talk to them!

Dave also had a great quotation for us: "If you're a bad guy and you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac." Basically, police and government agencies know what to do with seized Windows machines. They can recover whatever information they want, with tools that they've used countless times. The same holds true, but to a lesser degree, for Unix-based machines. But Macs evidently stymie most law enforcement personnel. They just don't know how to recover data on them. So what do they do? By and large, law enforcement personnel in American end up sending impounded Macs needing data recovery to the acknowledged North American Mac experts: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Evidently the Mounties have built up a knowledge and technique for Mac forensics that is second to none.

(I hope I'm not helping increase the number of sales Apple has to drug traffickers.)