During the long gestation period of Windows Vista, we've heard much about the company’s improved security features, its improved firewall and all-in-one security suite called Windows Defender. Some features -- namely Kernel PatchGuard -- have received quite a bit of attention in recent months. Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin is so confident in the robustness of the new operating system that he says that it may not even require antivirus software in certain situations.

Allchin cited two new security components that give parents great control over what their children can and cannot do on the operating system and allow Vista to be incredibly secure. The first component is Parental Controls which allows parents to monitor and manage their child's computer privileges. These include:

• Web Restrictions to limit access to what sites your child can visit and download content from.
  
• Time Limits to control how long your child can use the computer (can be limited to specific days of the week, specific hours of the day as well).
  
• Games can be blocked or given access to based on ESRB ratings and game content.
  
• Block Specific Programs that your child should not have access to.
  
• Activity Reports to give you a listing of what sites your child has visited during their session, the number of emails they've received, who they're instant messaging and more.
  

The new Activity Reports may raise a few eyebrows when it comes to privacy, but it will be interesting to see how well the new features are received.

The second component that Allchin described is Address Space [Layout] Randomization (ASLR). This feature intuitively renders system kernel object code in memory to ward off malicious attacks. Here's Microsoft security Guru Michael Howard on ASLR:

So what is ASLR? In short, when you boot a Windows Vista Beta 2 computer, we load system code into different locations in memory. This helps defeat a well-understood attack called "return-to-libc", where exploit code attempts to call a system function, such as the socket() function in wsock32.dll to open a socket, or LoadLibrary in kernel32.dll to load wsock32.dll in the first place. The job of ASLR is to move these function entry points around in memory so they are in unpredictable locations. In the case of Windows Vista Beta 2, a DLL or EXE could be loaded into any of 256 locations, which means an attacker has a 1/256 chance of getting the address right. In short, this makes it harder for exploits to work correctly.

Allchin went on to say that he is happy with the current security level of Vista even though he knows that hackers are constantly looking for new exploits to take advantage of. "Windows Vista is something that will have issues in security, because the bar is being raised over time. But in my opinion, it is the most secure system that's available, and it's certainly the most secure system that we've shipped," said Allchin.

Allchin went on to say “My son, seven years old, runs Windows Vista, and, honestly, he doesn't have an antivirus system on his machine. His machine is locked down with parental controls, he can't download things unless it's to the places that I've said that he could do, and I'm feeling totally confident about that. That is quite a statement. I couldn't say that in Windows XP SP2."