Security Product Efficacy

I’ve written about security products previously, laying out the framing that security products combine sensors and throttles with threat intelligence to provide protection against threats. As a product engineer, I spend most of my time thinking about how to improve sensors and throttles to enhance protection, but those components only provide value if the threatContinue reading “Security Product Efficacy”

Web Category Filtering

Since the first days of the web, users and administrators have sought to control the flow of information from the Internet to the local device. There are many different ways to implement internet filters, and numerous goals that organizations may want to achieve: Today’s post explores the last of these: blocking content based on category.Continue reading “Web Category Filtering”

Understanding SmartScreen and Network Protection

The vast majority of cyberthreats arrive via one of two related sources: That means that by combining network-level sensors and throttles with threat intelligence (about attacker sites), security software can block a huge percentage of threats. Protection Implementation On Windows systems, that source of network threat information is commonly called SmartScreen, and support for queryingContinue reading “Understanding SmartScreen and Network Protection”

Security Software – An Overview

I’ve spent nearly my entire professional career in software security: designing software to prevent abuse by bad actors. I’ve been battling the bad guys for over two decades now, from hunting security bugs in Microsoft Office (I once won an Xbox for finding a vulnerability that allowed malicious clipart take over your computer) to designingContinue reading “Security Software – An Overview”

Best Practices for SmartScreen AppRep

Last year, I wrote about how Windows integrates SmartScreen Application Reputation to help ensure users have a secure and smooth experience when running downloaded software. tl;dr: When a user runs a downloaded program, a call to SmartScreen’s web-based reputation service is made, and four possible outcomes can occur: As a software developer, it’s natural thatContinue reading “Best Practices for SmartScreen AppRep”