Over on the Windows Server Blog today, the team shared the news that that Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V has passed the Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL 4+). As a reformed Orange Book evaluator, I know what a big project something like this is, so thought it would be interesting to share. Here is what David B. Cross says about it: I am happy to announce that Windows … Read more »
Today Microsoft released an update to address a vulnerability that affects all versions of the .NET Framework when used on the Windows Server operating system. IT professionals are advised to get the update directly from the Microsoft Download Center. This allows us to get the update out as quickly as possible. The update will also be released through Windows Update and Windows Server Update services in the next few days. … Read more »
Summaries from previous months: Jan09 Security Bulletin SDL Benefit Summary When I do analysis and reports on Microsoft products, I typically look for where the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) has helped to provide improvement and provide some stats on that. This year, I decided to try and do this monthly to make it easier for me that when I do it all at once. This report is my attempt to … Read more »
I converted my office fileserver to Windows Server 2008 (WS2008) a while back and I’ve never been happier – WS2008 is my favorite product ever. Nicely modular, pretty much everything turned off by default and some great tools for enabling just the components your need for a particular role. There is one more step I’ve been wanting to take and that is to enable the Hyper-V role and convert my … Read more »
With Windows Server 2008, the Microsoft Windows Server team introduced a new installation option –Server Core. Server Core is a “minimal install” option of Windows Server that excludes much of the GUI and many applications – such as Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player – that would be present in a default installation. In this very short report (download the full report), I perform a brief analysis how much smaller … Read more »
Today is Launch Day for 3 big products from Microsoft – Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. Click on the image to learn more general information and participate in the virtual launch. I want to briefly salute some of the security improvement represented by these products. This is not a comprehensive list, and I will certainly dig into some of these in more detail later, but … Read more »
This past weekend I dug into an aspect of Windows Server codename “Longhorn” to personally check out something that I’ve been excited about for a while – a “server core” installation. Doing the Installation After burning myself a Beta3 disk, I fired it up and after a few basic screens (USEnglish keyboard, etc), I got this screen: I selected the CORE installation and proceeded. Chose “new installation” and a disk … Read more »