and provides anti-malware protection directly through the Windows filesystem.
• Windows activation: While activation is hardly new to Windows 8, Microsoft has created an Action Center experience in this release that tracks whether your copy of Windows is activated, and thus valid. You can see this interface in Figure 12-19.
Figure 12-19: Windows is activated
• Microsoft account: The ability to sign in to Windows 8 with a Microsoft account is obviously new to this version of the OS, but the underlying technology that Action Center is actually tracking here is whether your account is working properly and syncing settings from the PC to SkyDrive (and thus to other PCs) and vice versa.
• Automatic maintenance: Like previous Windows versions, Windows 8 will automatically run a scheduled maintenance routine at a set time, 3:00 a.m. What’s changed in Windows 8 is that this activity is now tracked by Action Center to ensure that it completes successfully. But you can use the Start maintenance link to run a manual check or Change maintenance settings to configure a new time.
• HomeGroup: Action Center now checks to see whether you’re part of a homegroup. This is important because signing in with a Microsoft account breaks the normal workgroup-style home network sharing we used to use.
We examine networking issues in Chapter 13.
• File History: The new File History feature works with the Push Button Reset functionality in Windows 8 to create a more flexible way of restoring lost data than the old method, a combination of Previous Files (which no one even knew existed) and Windows Backup (which was ponderous and slow).
• Drive status: Action Center now checks to see whether all of the fixed disks attached to your computer are working properly.
When Action Center detects an issue, it provides notifications via its system tray icon. Clicking these, or the associated warnings that appear in the Action Center control panel, brings you to the user interface you need to mitigate the issue. For example, as part of its overall system performance and reliability tracking, Action Center could eventually warn you to disable app[lication]s to help improve performance. This slightly off-base recommendation—it really means, “disable startup applications to improve boot-time performance” and has nothing to do with Metro-style apps—links to the Task Manager. In Windows 8, the Task Manager now provides a Startup tab that lets you enable and disable applications (but not Metro-style apps) that are configured to run at boot time. This can be seen in Figure 12-20.
But Wait, There’s More
In addition to the features discussed previously, Microsoft has improved a number of security features that debuted in previous Windows versions, too. Most of the features don’t require any user interaction. They simply work in the background, ensuring that Windows 8 is as secure as it can be.
Figure 12-20: Task Manager now helps you disable boot-time applications.
A small sampling includes the following:
• Credential Manager: Windows has long included a Credential Manager interface— previously called Windows Vault—that helps you combine the usernames and passwords for the local network and for websites with your Windows user account. New to this release is that you can now tie these other sign-ins with your Microsoft account for the first time, since most people will be signing in to Windows 8 with that account type.
• Windows kernel: The innermost part of Windows has been shored up with protection technologies that were curiously available only to other Windows components in previous OS versions.
• ASLR: Since Windows Vista, Windows has employed a technique called address space layout randomization (ASLR) to randomly load code and data into different memory addresses at run time, cutting down on an entire class of memory-based attacks. In Windows 8, ASLR has been improved with even more randomness. And it’s been extended to even more Windows components.
• Memory: Modern Windows versions have of course always included various forms of protection against memory-based attacks, and the move to isolated Metro-style apps will help in this and other regards. But Windows 8 also includes new protections against “use after free” vulnerabilities, where rogue or malicious applications are able to examine and exploit freed up memory that still includes valuable data or other code.
There’s still more, but you get the idea. While many Windows 8 security features are in your face when required, some simply work behind the scenes, tirelessly keeping you safe without you doing a thing. What’s missing is the “security theater” that used to dog older Windows versions, where the security features were purposefully made to be overly chatty and interruptive, providing you with a sense that something good was happening.
Summary
With Windows 8, Microsoft offers the first major change to user accounts since, well, it added user accounts to Windows. Now, home users can get the same kind of settings-roaming functionality that was previously available only in expensive and complex corporate environments, tied to the online ID—the Microsoft account—we all already use. Of course, those using traditional workgroup-type local accounts or domain accounts won’t be left behind either, and you can mix all three account types on the same PC if desired.
From a security perspective, Microsoft has finally closed the loop and silenced the critics by adding an excellent and effective antivirus solution to the OS. That, combined with new boot-time security protections, new security features like Windows SmartScreen, a host of new Action Center-based reliability and security tracking functionality, and, of course, all the excellent security features from Windows 7, makes Windows 8 the most secure Windows yet.
But then you expected nothing less, right?
• Understanding which Windows 7 networking features carry over to Windows 8
• Connecting to and managing wired networks
• Connecting to and managing Wi-Fi wireless networks
• Understanding how cellular data networks work and how they are different from other network types
• Connecting to and managing cellular data networks
