Microsoft wants YOU to pay for security

The company "may offer new security abilities on a paid basis," Microsoft Chief Technical Officer Craig Mundie said here at this week's RSA Conference on tech security. Such a possibility is one of many under consideration within Microsoft's security business unit, recently set up under its own vice president, Mike Nash.

The idea is still only hypothetical, but it represents an acknowledgement that Microsoft sees security not only as a necessary condition to reassure existing and future customers, but also as a potential source of revenue.

Asked why it has taken Microsoft 25 years to put secure computing at the forefront of its efforts, he said it's "because customers wouldn't pay for it until recently."

Admitting this was a flippant answer to a flippant question, Mundie said that chief information officers had only recently begun to demand security and that it is only in the last 10 years that Microsoft has attempted to play in the security-heavy worlds of banking payroll and networked systems.