Let’s face it. Virtualization is everywhere in businesses today. There probably isn’t an IT admin out there that doesn’t swear by it. The sheer number of benefits it adds to the IT departments with its reduced resources, better energy savings, easier administration, etc. It’s also nothing new really. It’s been around for quite some time now, but it has usually been limited to the IT departments, developers, system testers, or the other elite geeks. It hasn’t really been a product for mass consumption – until now very soon.

Anyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock for the past few weeks has probably heard about Microsoft’s new OS, Windows 7, and how it’s incorporated a built-in Windows XP virtualization. It will utilize Microsoft’s Virtual PC technology and host a built-in copy of Windows XP for legacy use. The technology seems pretty sweet on paper so far. There are still a few days before we get to try it out as a whole.

Even though virtualization has been in use for some time now, it’s usually always been in the hands of trained professionals (or at least those with a higher geek score than the average user). So, is the everyday user ready to take on the responsibility of having the equivalent of two machines running all the time?

One area of concern is that the virtual XP (VXP) still needs to be handled as if it were its own machine, just like any other server platform running in a virtual environment. The VXP still needs to run its own local copy of anti-virus, firewall, and maintain its own regular patch frequency. This also helps explain Microsoft’s extension of the XP support line.

So, not only are IT admins now responsible for maintaining a regular update and policy environment for all the standard user machines, but they also need to take into consideration what could be running in “XP Mode.” I’m sure in larger companies software is controlled, and policies restrict the usage of this. But there are plenty of medium/smaller companies that don’t have as tight of reigns on the systems.

Windows 7 seems to be a great step forward, even in security related aspects, but does this open up the attack vector even more, or could it circumvent all of Windows 7’s security and use the VXP as the attacking source now? There are plenty of questions to be asked still, but it doesn’t look like any are stopping the product. It isn’t exactly a standard default either; the XP Mode is an opt-in option. So, at least if there is no need for legacy support, then you don’t have to take it.

I’ll be getting a copy of the next beta release as soon as it’s available and let you know some more of the details as the product is explored more thoroughly. So, what are your ideas/concerns about the new “feature?” Let us know in the comments.

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I’ve been playing with Windows 7 Beta since its official release. As most have expected, it really is much like the current Vista. But I’ve noticed enough tweaks to be inspired. It can really be looked at as like the jump from Win98 to Win98 2nd Ed. It definitely improves over Vista, and so far, every way is better (at least to me). There are quite a few GUI and UI changes, but I’m not going to get into those. What I’ve focused on so far is tracking down any and all security related items that seemed to irk me in Vista.

One of the first things I checked out was UAC. They changed it slightly but mostly just to ease the pains of some people’s annoyances with it (I was one of them). The underlying intentions are still there. They even go so far as to claim that even if you disable all notifications, it is still working in the background. So for this, I can see many support calls on why something didn’t happen when a user tried something (because you were never notified of the pending actions needed). My actual experience with the UAC is pretty much still unchanged, I went with the setting just below default, and still got numerous prompts and displays when trying to install something.

User Account Control (UAC)

Another area I wanted to explore was the default settings on the firewall. One area which I always assumed should be defaulted was blocking outbound connections. This was a feature added in Vista but was not default. I’m guessing 75% of people never even knew it was a feature. I was hoping MS would get their act together and enable this by default. But I guess like the previous UAC, this would have caused too many nagging issues for the user. One more thing I’ve read about but haven’t had a chance to look into deeper is that MS has opened the doors to the built-in firewall and are going to allow 3rd party vendors the ability to integrate with the firewall. But with this also comes the ability to enable/disable parts of the firewall as needed. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. The first thing that comes to my paranoid mind is malicious software exploiting this to simply turn off your firewall, or open a port for its own use. I’m not exactly sure how this “feature” is going to work, but I think this will be my next deep dive.

Gone are the ways of the “Security Center” – in its place we get the “Action Center.” I really wasn’t impressed by what it had to offer. It is an improvement, but basically it just combined a handful of otherwise tedious to manage items into a single one-stop-shop for management (Items included: Security Center; Problem, Reports, and Solutions; Windows Defender; Windows Update; Diagnostics; Network Access Protection; Backup and Restore; Recovery; and User Account Control).

Action Center

One of the other areas that was extended was with the BitLocker Drive Encryption. It has been extended to support external media now. I’m still a fan of TrueCrypt, but I like that MS is trying.

BitLocker Management

So, overall, I think MS is definitely going in the right direction. This is still beta software, so I’m sure some things will change before final release. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even find some of these enhancements in a Vista SP2.