Microsoft News Tracker

As part of its Vista promise to the EU, Microsoft said last week that it would be delivering some new security APIs to third party vendors of security product. Part of the package was delivered today:

Microsoft Corp. said Monday it has given security vendors Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc. some of the information they want to make their products work with Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista.

Microsoft spokesman Tom Brookes said the software interfaces for the Windows Security Center — Vista’s new “security dashboard” — were uploaded to a Web site for software developers.

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“We still don’t know if we have everything we need or not,” Symantec spokesman Cris Paden said. Phone messages left with McAfee weren’t immediately returned.

Microsoft also said it planned to talk to both Symantec and McAfee to discuss changes they want made to Microsoft’s anti-hacking tool, Patchguard. Symantec wanted its software to be excluded from Patchguard’s scope so it would not be wrongly identified as a threat to the system.

Symantec, McAfee, and the other vendors are going to have to work fast to be ready when Vista is released for businesses in November. We can argue about business Vista adoption rates, but there’s no argument that the business part of the security business is the most lucrative and they’ll all want to put on their best display of proficiency.