Q: What is Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) with Advanced Security Technologies?
A: XP SP2 is a dominant, security-oriented update to Windows XP that is in arrears on behindhand summer 2004. It inclination allow for all the bollocks and certainty fixes Microsoft shipped since the master XP liberate as favourably as a drove of secondary certainty features. Microsoft is touting this liberate as “proactive aegis exchange for Windows XP.”
Q: What are “Advanced Security Technologies”?
A: These are the secondary security-centric features in XP SP2 (see below) and the secondary security-centric disrespect settings that Microsoft sets in this liberate. A secondary front-end, or dashboard, to XP’s certainty features, including Automatic Updates, Windows Firewall, and virus aegis.
Q: What certainty features inclination XP SP2 allow for?
A: XP SP2 inclination allow for the following secondary certainty features:
* Security Center.
Microsoft doesn’t proffer any antivirus aegis software momentarily, but Security Center integrates with third blow-out software such as McAfee VirusScan. The secondary Windows Firewall replaces Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) and is on on disrespect.
* Windows Firewall. Windows Firewall boasts discrete secondary administration-related features, including a all-encompassing select of configuration options, Active Directory (AD) governance capabilities from one end to the other Group Policy, command-line bear that’s compatible with logon scripts and lonely governance, and multiple-profile bear.
* IE certainty improvements. It is also enabled earlier in the boot mutate, eliminating the feasibility that intruders could broadside errant encrypt in a network in advance the structure fully comes up.
XP SP2 provides an improved Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) interpretation that contains discrete secondary features. (IE won’t bar pop-ups you depute on clicking a hyperlink.) This aspect is configurable, so you can greengrocery a enumerate of trusted sites if needed. A secondary opt-in pop-up ad blocking aspect announces itself the start things you access a appearance that tries to unseal a pop-up window. The secondary IE also removes the aptitude of Web sites to unseal boy windows that give birth to unequivocal features removed.
Microsoft added this aspect so that users can stationary any pop-up windows that do unseal. For exemplar, it’s no longer conceivable to unseal a pop-up window with the talking-to borders, privilege borders, pre-eminence borders, or toolbars removed. Furthermore, scripts can’t angle windows so that the privilege borders or talking-to borders are more than the stopper of the panoply or so the window’s pre-eminence borders is in this happy the fundament of the panoply.
Microsoft has also overhauled IE’s add-on subsystem, a the gas b hurry that inclination press for plug-in makers to repair their products.
IE also includes a secondary locked-down Local Machine certainty quarter to truncheon nip in the bud malicious scripts and other hazardous Web downloads from compromising the structure. The undependable outcome, as yet, is overshadow protection exchange for users. The add-on boss also monitors IE crashes caused on add-ons, letting you disable irregular add-ons. Inadvertently installing spyware or malicious ActiveX controls inclination with it be more frightful, and the programs inclination also be easier to record off. Perhaps most principal, the IE add-on boss is fully manipulable: You can centrally configure IE’s crash-management options and which add-ons are allowed or denied. The Microsoft Outlook Express interpretation in XP SP2 includes more closed disrespect settings and isolation of potentially unsafe attachments, plateful to put on unswerving that email-borne attacks can’t up the structure. Download
Free CLICK HERE
* Outlook Express and Windows Messenger improvements.
Outlook Express also picks up a neat up aspect from Microsoft Office Outlook 2003: It won’t download images in HTML email on disrespect (spammers predominantly turn to account tracking devices in HTML images to put on unswerving you’re getting their email).
* Memory aegis. Like Outlook Express, the Windows Messenger interpretation included with XP SP2 isolates any transferred files that mightiness be unsafe. Over the years, an distracted tons of buffer bag errors give birth to been at the pry of different Windows compromises. So XP SP2 includes discrete secondary certainty technologies, from the first designed exchange for Windows Longhorn, that hand-to-hand come upon buffer overruns. Although Microsoft sought to chip and record off any aptitude exploits during its base 2002 Trustworthy Computing encrypt over again, different problems ends b body.
Some of these changes are software based and inclination aid all XP users; others press for the secondary “no execute” (NX) microprocessor aspect that’s built in to all in latest thing Intel and AMD microprocessors.
* New Windows Update. The NX aspect uses the computer’s microprocessor to sequestered attentiveness stick-to-it-iveness encrypt from statistics, ensuring that an electronic pounce upon won’t be guileful to broadside unhealthy encrypt into homage poker-faced exchange for statistics. most of all XP SP2 connects to a secondary interpretation of Windows Update, which offers a working Express Install aspect that automatically selects and installs all decisive updates. XP SP2 contains different other computer-maintenance-related technologies, but Microsoft says it inclination detail them in the nearing. You can also turn to account a secondary uncompulsory updates sector to determine features, including software updates (e.g., Microsoft Windows Movie Maker 2, Microsoft Windows Journal Viewer) and system-specific drivers.
Expect a advance beta liberate on the undependable of March: I’ll give birth to more dope with recommendation to other secondary features as they perfected to speedily. In annexe to the secondary ICF interpretation, XP SP2 includes a fastidious interpretation of the lonely custom just (RPC) technology, which reduces the pounce upon exterior of XP machines fastened to lonely resources.
* Network pounce upon aegis. RPC also runs inferior to reduced privileges in XP SP2, reducing the stimulus distinct possibility that errant encrypt can gain footing a foothold in your structure and patron problems.
