Speaking in the opening keynote address of the RSA Conference 2007 in San Francisco, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said that security needs to migrate from the computer infrastructure to the end user, in order to cope with the changing environment of portable devices inside corporate networks.

“Security is the fundamental challenge that will determine whether we can successfully create a new generation of connected experiences that enable people to have anywhere access to communications, content and information,” he said.

“This challenge is going to get a lot tougher,” he said. “The threat landscape has evolved in dramatic ways. When we first began working on Vista most attacks were done for notoriety. Today it is a lot more serious and nefarious than it was five years ago,” he added.

In his last keynote speech at RSA the Microsoft chairman criticized conventional passwords. “Passwords are not only weak, but passwords have the huge problem that if you get more and more of them, the worse it is,” he said. “Smart cards and certificates in general is the way to go. Enterprises should start to migrate from passwords to smart cards. We are laying the groundwork so that we can have certificate-based roots of trust.”

– Fiona Raisbeck, SC Magazine, at RSA Conference in San Francisco February 6, 2007.