CESG Advises Government Upgrade To Windows 7

The government has been given the green light to to use Microsoft Windows 7 by CESG, the Information Assurance (IA) arm of GCHQ.

Essentially, CESG is encouraging government departments to upgrade to the new operating system, because it believes that it is the safest Microsoft operating system to date.

“Government IT environments demand security measures that go beyond the needs of typical commercial users and Windows 7 has been deemed suitable for use across government,” said Redmond in a press release. “Microsoft’s full disk encryption feature, Bitlocker; has been deemed suitable for use up to Business Impact Level 3 by CESG, meeting the needs of the majority of government users.”

Industry Partnership

“CESG has a proactive approach to partnering with industry leaders and because of our strategic partnership with Microsoft, we have been able to produce guidance on using Windows 7 for all government bodies,” said Jonathan Hoyle, Director General IS&A, CESG.

The CESG revealed earlier this week that it was working with Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies at its recently created UK-based security centre, so that its products and software could be examined and tested for possible government use.

“Working with CESG on the security of our products is an ongoing engagement that reaffirms our commitment to UK government as a strategic partner,” said Dr Nicola Hodson, general manager at Microsoft. “We are making considerable investments to increase the security of our technology and to provide implementation guides and training based on industry best practices.”

In an effort to boost its security credentials, Microsoft has also apparently trained its developers, testers and program managers in ways to develop more secure code, and has put in place a process for developing secure code called the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL).

Internet Explorer 6

The CESG recommendation comes despite the government advising its own departments back in early August that they should stick with Internet Explorer 6 because of costs. That government advice came despite all the known security issues associated with that version of IE.

The British government’s decision to stick with Internet Explorer 6 is in marked contrast to other European nations. In January, the German government urged its citizens to ditch Microsoft Internet Explorer as a result of the Aurora attack on Google. The French government followed suit shortly after that, and urged its computer users to switch to a different web browser such as Firefox or Chrome.

Microsoft’s web browser has been around now for over a decade, and in August Internet Explorer celebrated its fifteen birthday.