Windows Vista Security
- 1. Presentation On window vista security
- 2. Introduction: Windows Vista is a line of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media center PCs. On January 30 2007, it was released worldwide, and was made available for purchase and download from Microsoft’s website. The release of Windows Vista came more than five years after the introduction of its predecessor, Windows XP, the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft Windows. Windows Vista contains many changes and new features, improved searching features, new multimedia creation tools such as Windows DVD Maker, and redesigned networking, audio, print, and display sub-systems. Microsoft's primary stated objective with Windows Vista, however, has been to improve the state of security in the Windows operating system. One common criticism of Windows XP and its predecessors has been their commonly exploited security vulnerabilities and overall susceptibility to malware, viruses and buffer overflows.
- 3. New Security Features in Windows Vista : User Account Control Windows Bit Locker Drive Encryption Windows Defender Address Space Layout Randomizer Windows Firewall USB Device Lockdown x64-specific features Phishing Filter
- 4. User Account Control: Windows Vista now provides exactly two types of user accounts: Administrator and Standard User. Authentication every time. UAC may be annoying. Administrators can also filter out applications that might be undesirable at work, such as instant messaging, file sharing, and digital media solutions.
- 5. Diagram:
- 6. Windows Bit Locker Drive Encryption Windows vista includes technologies to protect the files on your system whether they reside on a local drive or a network server, or even if you share them with others. and the new bitlocker™ feature introduces full system volume encryption, making the data on your hard disk even more secure. If Windows Vista detects that one of these files has been altered while the machine was off, it will lock the drive and require you to enter your BitLocker recovery password in order to unlock it. Otherwise, the files on the drive will be lost forever.
- 7. Diagram:
- 8. Windows Defender Defender is an anti-spyware program that is built into Vista. It has also been available as a stand-alone program for some time and will run in XP as well as Vista. Note that Defender is not an anti-virus program, which must be obtained separately. Also, its primary function is to block spyware rather than to remove already installed infections. Among anti-spyware programs, Windows Defender does not get top ratings so you may have to add an anti-spyware program anyway
- 9. Address Space Layout Randomizer A new Windows Vista feature called Address Space Layout Randomizer (ASLR) will virtually eliminate remote system attacks for the first time on the Windows platform. (A similar technology is currently employed in Linux and various UNIX versions.) This feature ensures that system files load at random (1 in 256) memory offsets at every system boot, compared to previous Windows versions where system files always loaded to the same offset memory location. Because of this change, most (approximately 99 percent) remote attacks will simply fail on x64-based Vista versions because attackers can't rely on files being in the same location .
- 10. Windows Firewall In Windows Vista, Windows Firewall is enabled by default, providing full inbound network protection and some outbound protection as well. In Windows Vista, Windows Firewall provides basic security functionality that works hand-in-hand with other security features to provide better overall security. Unlike with anti-spyware solutions, however, you should typically only run a single firewall. Most modern third party firewall solutions are intelligently designed and will disable Windows Firewall upon installation.
- 11. USB Device Lockdown IT administrators will be delighted to discover that one of the new features in Windows Vista's support of Active Directory (AD) Group Policy (GP) is a USB Device Lockdown feature that can be used to prevent users from connecting iPods, USB flash drives, and other USB-based storage devices to corporate PCs. This is an important feature and one that will surely make Windows Vista more desirable to businesses.
- 12. x64-specific features A number of Windows Vista security features will only be made available on x64 versions of the OS, the 64-bit versions of Windows Vista that run on newer AMD and Intel processors. This prevents hackers (and as it turns out, security companies and even Microsoft applications) from altering the Vista kernel at run-time; Digitally signed drivers, which ensures that all hardware drivers used in x64 Vista versions are digitally signed.
- 13. Phishing Filter Windows Vista includes a Phishing Filter, which is exposed in both Windows Mail and Internet Explorer 7, which detects phishing emails and Web sites and helps prevent you from succumbing to a scam. Microsoft's Phishing Filter utilizes three methods for protecting you from this type of attack. First, Microsoft maintains a blacklist of known phishing sites to which it compares all URLs clicked inside of Windows Vista (in IE 7 or Windows Mail; a local copy of this list is stored on your PC). Second, IE 7 and Windows Mail analyze URLs in emails and Web sites you visit to see if they meet certain criteria which may indicate they are fraudulent. And third, the Phishing Filter can optionally send suspicious URLs to Microsoft for further research, though this won't happen without your consent.
- 14. Final thoughts: This is from high-level list of security enhancements that Windows Vista represents a major security advance over Windows XP and previous Windows versions. Windows Vista is dramatically more secure than is Windows XP. But over time, it will need to see how Vista withstands the real-world electronic attacks that will no doubt hound this OS.
- 15. Thank-You!!!