RSA event sets up malware war

SAN FRANCISCO - When Microsoft Chief Software Architect Bill Gates used his keynote address at last week's RSA Conference to tout his company's snowballing initiatives around anti-spyware and anti-virus software, the message was met cautiously by customers, and dismissed by competitors.

"I couldn't care less what Microsoft does," said Symantec CEO John Thompson during a roundtable discussion. "I care what customers think." As for Gates' pledge to provide consumers free anti-spyware protection, Thompson added, "You get what you pay for."

Symantec next month plans to include spyware protection in its AntiVirus Corporate Edition 10 and Symantec Client Security.

Microsoft says 5 million people have downloaded its free beta of AntiSpyware . The company plans another beta before July and expects to have a final version out in the fall, said Gytis Barzdukas, director of product management, security business and technology. While the stand-alone version is expected to be free, a separate corporate version with management features for monitoring, analysis and policy controls, is scheduled to be introduced later this year at a price yet to be determined.

As for a corporate Microsoft anti-virus product line, it's expected to be based on the Sybari Software technology Microsoft is in the process of acquiring, Barzdukas said. Sybari's Antigen scanning technology supports several vendor-scanning engines, although not the largest - those from McAfee, Trend Micro and Symantec. Microsoft "will give them the opportunity to be integrated into the Sybari scanner," he said.

Conference attendees had mixed reactions to the Microsoft push.

"If you listen to Bill, all we have to do is wait a couple of months and all our problems will be solved," said Tom Jones, director of security at California's Department of Health and Human Services, and a Symantec customer. "But most of our problems seem to come from Microsoft and its patches." He said he tried the Microsoft AntiSpyware beta software and wasn't impressed. In a test with a fully patched Windows desktop machine running AntiSpyware, it was still hit with more than 150 adware programs and a few Trojans he would have expected to be blocked, Jones said.

However, Michael Asante, chief security officer at American Electric Power, which uses anti-virus software from Trend Micro and McAfee, said Microsoft could potentially provide an "integrated approach" that he would consider adopting. "We use other products but we are evaluating Microsoft's approach," he said.

One likely outcome is that "Microsoft is going to make prices drop" for anti-virus protection, said Gartner analyst John Pescatore.

Gates also said Microsoft intends to fight phishing through a new edition of Internet Explorer. Gates said the updated browser, IE 7.0, will guard against URL re-direction. It is scheduled to be in beta in early summer for use with Windows XP SP2.

Also at the conference, Cisco CEO John Chambers used his keynote to formally unveil Cisco's new line of intrusion-prevention systems . Chambers told attendees that Cisco is betting the bank on designing "self-defending networks" where security measures against most types of attacks will be countered automatically rather than manually.