Microsoft will be doing a lot to make developers and customers happy with its pending Internet Explorer release, if partner sources with inside information on the IE 7.0 browser are right. But there's one area where Microsoft won't be winning a lot of applause.

The company will continue to drag its feet by refusing to provide full support for the CSS2 (Cascading Style Sheets Level 2) W3C (Worldwide Web Consortium) standard, Microsoft partners say.

Sources claiming familiarity with Microsoft's IE 7.0 plans said the company will add some additional CSS2 support to its new standalone browser.

Contrary to popular wisdom, Windows appears to be more secure than a popular version of Linux, according to an upcoming report from two security researchers.
The researchers found that Windows Server 2003 actually had fewer security vulnerabilities identified last year than Linux and that the holes in Windows took less time to patch.

But the study is already attracting controversy for its methodology. Linux proponents note that the two systems have different configurations and are not easily comparable since they contain different functionality out of the box.

Database archiving vendor Princeton Softech has announced a major new release of its Archive for Servers and Relational Tools product focusing on security enhancements.

Version 6.0 now allows organizations to better define who has access to specific data and specify business policies for archiving.

These types of enhanced security features are a step forward for database archiving, said Raymond Paquet, a vice president at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn.

The National Security Agency built a version of Linux with more security tools that its technologists believe could help make the country's computing infrastructure less vulnerable.

They've won over the Linux developer community with the changes. But success depends on its adoption by U.S. companies and government agencies, something that remains very much in doubt.

For more than a decade, the National Security Agency has worked on a way to use a computer's operating systems to control how software applications and users can access data. The agency succeeded years ago in creating these "mandatory access-control" features for specialized operating systems, but very few users deployed them.

Taking a gamble in 2000 on the emerging Linux operating system, NSA started applying its security approach to the open-source code. The result is Security Enhanced Linux, which it hopes can raise the nation's overall level of cybersecurity.

While Mozilla Firefox has slowed its growth pace, the open-source browser still is making enough inroads to knock Microsoft's Internet Explorer below 90 percent user share for the first time in three years.

Web browser user-share data released Monday show that Firefox's rate of growth has dropped slightly since its Version 1.0 release. The browser had been increasing about one percentage point a month since November, but the pace has fallen this month, reports Web analytics provider WebSideStory Inc.

On the heels of the release of Firefox 1.0.1, officials at Mozilla Foundation on Thursday laid out the near-term roadmap for updates to that browser, as well as the Mozilla suite and the Thunderbird e-mail client.

Next on the release track, said Aza Dotzler in a posting to the Mozilla site, will be Thunderbird, the stand-alone e-mail client that the foundation's pitching as a Microsoft Outlook replacement. Like Firefox's update Thursday, Thunderbird 1.0.1 will be a minor upgrade, and should hit the Internet the middle of next week, Dotzler said.

Mozilla 1.7.6, may also ship next week, Dotzler added, and will include many of the same security fixes as in Firefox 1.0.1 and Thunderbird 1.0.1. "I'm usually overly-optimistic but I think we can get that out next week too," wrote Dotzler in his posting.

The first beta of Mozilla 1.8 will appear after that, with beta 2 expected in about three weeks.

Mozilla 1.8, Firefox 1.1, and Thunderbird 1.1 are all on schedule to ship by the middle of the year.

Microsoft will start beta testing its all-in-one Microsoft Update in mid-March, according to an e-mail to potential beta testers. Microsoft is looking for a cross-section of users familiar with not only Windows, but also Office, SQL Server, and Exchange.

Tuesday, Microsoft's chairman and chief technologist announced Microsoft Update, a consolidated update service that would blend now-separate sites and services for the company's operating systems and applications.

At the 14th annual RSA Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates highlighted some of the company's progress toward its Trustworthy Computing initiative, which began more than three years ago. Before a standing-room-only crowd, Gates also outlined some of the company's short-term plans to help its customers bolster their security.

In the opening keynote, Gates said Microsoft will release Internet Explorer 7 later this year with improved security capabilities, including anti-phishing technology. The new version of IE had been slated to be released as part of the next version of Windows, not due until next year, but the company decided to release it sooner to improve security.

From the SAM website:
SAM is a program to monitor (in real-time) the number of alerts generated by Snort. Having recently set up Snort and ACID I felt like there was something missing.

Snort was great for identifying suspicious traffic and ACID was great for digging in to the details but I needed something that was a little higher overview and able to sounds alarms if certain conditions were met.

For instance if I was attacked 100 times in a 5 minutes period. SAM does not replace Snort or ACID but rather it compliments them.

Where can I get SAM and SNORT?:
SAM - http://freesoftware.lookandfeel.com/sam/
SNORT - http://www.snort.org/

If you're sick of the unmanageable onslaught of spy ware ad ware and other nasties such as browser hijacks, then you should try Microsoft’s latest software acquisition.

Formerly known as GIANT AntiSpyware, this version of the award winning software is free to Windows users while in Beta.While the current version appears to have no difference to its originator other than re-branding, Microsoft is releasing regular signature updates.

Where can I get Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware?
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx