Security will be USP for Enterprise Vista

Microsoft is planning a major effort to sell new security features in Windows Vista to enterprise customers. It will emphasize improvements to the Windows networking stack and secure networking techniques, such as server and domain isolation, as the unique selling point (USP) of the operating system and its server, known as Longhorn.

Mike Schutz, Group Product Manager for the Windows Server Division says that Microsoft will use the RSA Conference in San Jose in February, as well as the company’s TechEd conference in Boston in June to evangelize the security enhancements in Vista and its upcoming Longhorn version of Windows server.

eWeek reports, “One focus of those presentations will be IPSec, a venerable protocol used for securing message data at the network layer as well as for authenticating the source of data packets sent over networks. Enterprises have historically used IPSec for VPN sessions that connect remote users to corporate resources. But Microsoft has rebuilt its TCP/IP stack ‘brick by brick’ in Vista and Longhorn and hopes to ‘paint IPSec with a different brush’, said Ian Hameroff, product manager for Windows server core networking at Microsoft.”

“The knee-jerk reaction is that IPSec is used for VPN. We want to unlock the other value,” Hameroff said.