Microsoft Adds Anti-snooping Safeguards

Microsoft has added encryption safeguards to the Outlook.com webmail service and to the OneDrive cloud storage service, in part to better protect these consumer products from government surveillance.

“Our goal is to provide even greater protection for data across all the great Microsoft services you use and depend on every day. This effort also helps us reinforce that governments use appropriate legal processes, not technical brute force, if they want access to that data,” Matt Thomlinson, vice president, Trustworthy Computing Security, at Microsoft wrote in a blog post.

The move follows similar ones from other cloud computing providers. For example, Google announced end-to-end encryption for Gmail in April, including protection for email messages while they travel among Google data centers. It recently announced similar encryption for its Google Drive cloud storage service.

It’s not clear from Microsoft’s announcement whether the encryption protection it announced covers Outlook.com messages and OneDrive files as they travel within Microsoft data centers. It’s also not clear what, if any, encryption OneDrive and Outlook.com have had until now. Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cloud computing providers like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and many others have been rattled by disclosures from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden regarding government snooping into online communications, due to the effect on their consumer and business customers.

As a result, these companies have been busy boosting encryption on their systems, while also lobbying the U.S. government to stop the stealthy and widespread monitoring of Internet services.

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Server 2008 Support Ends In 2015

Microsoft has extended support for Windows Server 2008 until 15 January 2015.

Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 operating system had been earmarked to enter the firm’s extended support phase on 9 July 2013, however the firm has moved that date back by 18 months. The firm said that it will keep Windows Server 2008 in the mainstream support phase until 15 January 2015.

Microsoft generally provides a decade of support for its high profile operating systems and software applications. The company said, “Microsoft policy provides a minimum of five years of Mainstream Support or two years of Mainstream Support after the successor product ships, whichever is longer.”

Of course Microsoft likes its customers to buy newer, shiner versions of its software whenever the firm releases it, but server operating systems customers are resistant to change in order to avoid any possible disruption in service availability. The company is desperately trying to get customers to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 and Windows 8, even though it extended support for the operating system until 8 APril 2014.

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