Security Expert: Upgrading To Windows 8 Is Not A Bad Decision At All

Not a bad decision at all, you say? It’s a great decision. But security firm Sophos is very obviously talking from the safety perspective and Microsoft has undoubtedly put in a lot of effort to make its latest operating system as water-tight as possible.

Speaking to CNME, James Lyne, directory of Technology Strategy at Sophos said:

“Upgrading to Windows 8 isn’t a bad decision for businesses from a security perspective as it builds in new capabilities and improves on security from prior versions.

It’s important that businesses recognise that security built into the operating system isn’t a panacea and it is still critical to practice defence in depth to provide effective protection”.

Still, the expert believes that Microsoft has invested in a baseline security system (in other words, the first line of defense) that it bundles with the new operating system. Things like these, according to them, continue to make things difficult for cybercriminals:

“Some of the new features help significantly, such as making it way harder for malware to load as a rootkit. In Windows 8, providing you have a computer with the required hardware, the operating system boot loader is signed with a certificate that allows the device to identify whether the code being loaded is genuine Microsoft or a nasty piece of malicious code.

As with anything, such capabilities aren’t entirely bulletproof but they raise the bar for attackers”.

Windows 7 was inherently much more secure than all previous versions of the OS — quite certainly building on all the security loopholes that Redmond closes and patches up regularly. But it’s safe to say that the company has one upped the previous version and put its years of experience to great use.