Talks about Windows Vista Security and how to defeat Malware in Edinburgh in November

The Business Technology Alliance User Group are a very active community based in Scotland. On the 29th November 2006 there will be an evening of technical discussion no doubt including intense technical debate at Microsoft's Offices in Edinburgh. The event is free for all to attend - all the User Group asks is that you email John Thomson to request a place.

Full details of the event including abstracts can be found here.

The evening will include two technical (no marketing!) talks detailed as follows:

TALK 1: How to stop Internet Nasties/Malware from taking over your machine.

ABSTRACT 1: The Internet provides many wonderful opportunities as well as plenty of malicious software including worms, viruses, spyware and rootkits. During this session Steve Lamb will take you on a technical journey examining the techniques malicious software uses to compromise machines and how to counter them. Adopting the principle of least privilege certainly protects you from many of the threats - the challenge being how to maintain business as usual. We'll take a look at how malicious software hides itself on compromised machines and consider the types of secondary attacks that take place using botnet machines.

TALK 2: What does Windows Vista Security have to offer me?
ABSTRACT 2: In a World where bolt-on security seems to be the accepted norm,Windows Vista faces an interesting challenge. It's the first operating system to go through the entire Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) from design to implementation. Windows Vista has been designed with Information Security top of mind from the outset and is expected to significantly raise the bar for protecting users from external threats.
Join Steve Lamb from Microsoft for this talk to learn about both the design ethos, architecture and security features of Windows Vista right before the official product launch kicks off. We'll look into User Access Control, Mandatory Integrity Control, Internet Explorer's Protected mode and the way that operating system services restrict themselves from being compromised.

BitLocker provides the means to encrypt the entire filesystem and ensure
system integrity - we'll look at how Bitlocker works and which versions of
Windows Vista will support it. Finally we'll take a look at the brand new
firewall that includes built-in IPsec capabilities.