A secure democratic Net is a fundamental right

The new free antivirusproduct from Microsoft is important because it is the only way to give to the millions of windows users a free antivirus that doesn't throw away critical windows files and has a regular update. The safety of all depends on the safety of the weakest link and the weakest link are those people that don't have an antivirus. And as ISP's and other stakeholders aren't doing enough - and won't be because of the economic breakdown - to secure their networks it is finally up to Microsoft to do the right thing - which it did.

It makes the discussion about a free antivirus distributed by the ISP's to all of its clients in Belgium as foreseen by the new Belgian Telecom Law finally easy to realise because it wouldn't cost the ISP's a cent and would only give advantages. It would also make it possible to install a Network Access policy. No access if you have no antivirus, at least not the free Microsoft one.

And maybe the decision by Microsoft will inspire other companies (hardware, middleware, hosting, ISP) that security is an integral part of the product, even a virtual one.

But for professional users this doesn't change a thing because what you need today is not an antivirus product but an integrated securityproduct that secures your identity, transactions, information, data, and does things like backup, inventory and patch, code defense, encryption and so on.... The product that will win this race will be the product that can deliver one integrated console with a lot of functions that won't go nuts if one of its arsenal gets updated. This is why antivirus companies are changing from antivirus products to integrated security products. But they still have a long way to go. At least Microsoft gives them now a deadline and that may be a good thing for the integrators in those firms because they will need more funds to have the appriopiate working mix of securityfunctions in their securityproduct.

This will have an enormous impact on countries where there is no legislation worthy of that name about datasecurity. Once those integrated securityproduct are the standard at an acceptional price for the professional users, it will be much easier for lawmakers to implement datasecurity laws without having to fear for the enormous costs it would take nowadays because you have to integrate yourself so many different products and functions.