This interview appeared in Financial Times on February 15, 2006.
Financial Times: How much resource does Microsoft put into security?
Bill Gates: Security is our top priority. I can’t see that changing any time soon.
FT: More important than hitting the Vista deadline? [Windows Vista, the next version of Windows, is due to be launched late this year.]
BG: Oh, absolutely. Believe me, Vista would have been out nine months ago if we hadn’t had to do all the security design reviews and put the security features in. XP SP2 [the security update to the previous version of Windows] was a huge effort, when we took the people off Vista.
There is no doubt we have put our money where our statements are on this. We would have had a release of Windows out way earlier if it wasn’t for this focus on security. Even today, the date is not the sacrosanct thing. It is the feedback from the users, and the experience we have with this thing.
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FT: After the big push on security around XP SP2, has it now become business as usual at Microsoft?
BG: In the sense that we know how to factor that into our schedules, yes. But it’s still the biggest thing in any development schedule. The amount of security work as you move up the stack gets to be less and less. But Windows is down here low in the stack, and so that’s where the most work is. That’s where smart cards have to connect up to, code reputation has to connect up to, the whole security centre that makes it easy to say what your security update is, that’s down here.
For any Windows schedule in the future there will always be that security work. So no, it’s not business as usual. But hey, this is software, and security is the most important feature of software. After all, digital usage of critical information goes up every year. What was adequate a few years ago is no longer adequate. People are relying on these systems more and more.

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