The Ten Year Milestone of Trustworthy Computing and Privacy

Ten years ago, a series of high-profile cyberattacks surfaced, including Code Red, Nimda and "I Love You," underscoring the need for improved security, privacy and reliability. This lead Bill Gates on January 15, 2002, to send out a companywide memo stating Microsoft must make trustworthy computing the highest priority for the company and for the industry over the next decade. 

Today, Microsoft is marking the milestone of the original TwC memo by affirming its ongoing commitment to Trustworthy Computing for the next decade-plus, and highlighting the lessons learned and how they serve as a foundation for building secure, private and reliable experiences as computing and society continue to evolve. 

In the last ten years, Microsoft has continued to make privacy an important commitment.  Microsoft was one of the first companies to publish privacy standards for developers and to provide consumers with layered privacy notices.  Microsoft continues to work responsibly to manage customer information, provide transparency about our privacy practices, and offer meaningful privacy choices.

 We understand privacy will continue to be an evolving and ongoing effort, so we emphasize adaptability and flexibility to respond to shifting privacy imperatives. Today Microsoft employs more than 40 full-time
privacy professionals, with several hundred more employees responsible for helping to ensure that privacy policies, procedures and technologies are applied across all products, services, processes and systems.

Over the next decade, cloud computing and our connected society will create vast amounts of data, which creates new challenges. One will be how we continue to protect people’s privacy, even as “big data” and
global data flows strain information principles that rely heavily on “notice and consent.” 

To learn more about what’s planned for TwC Next, visit: https://www.microsoft.com/twc.