Microsoft to host security summit after CrowdStrike disaster

Microsoft may also demand new testing procedures from cyber security vendors rather than adapting the Windows system itself.

Apple, which was not hit by the outages, blocks all third-party providers from accessing the kernel of its MacOS operating system, forcing them to operate in the more limited “user-mode.”

Microsoft has previously said it could not do the same, after coming to an understanding with the European Commission in 2009 that it would give third parties the same access to its systems as that for Microsoft Defender.

Some experts said, however, that this voluntary commitment to the EU had not tied Microsoft’s hands in the way it claimed, arguing that the company had always been free to make the changes now under consideration.

“These are technical decisions of Microsoft that were not part of [the arrangement],” said Thomas Graf, a partner at Cleary Gottlieb in Brussels who was involved in the case.

“The text [of the understanding] does not require them to give access to the kernel,” added AJ Grotto, a former senior director for cyber security policy at the White House.

Grotto said Microsoft shared some of the blame for the July disruption since the outages would not have been possible without its decision to allow access to the kernel.

Nevertheless, while it might boost a system’s resilience, blocking kernel access could also bring “real trade-offs” for the compatibility with other software that had made Windows so popular among business customers, Forrester analyst Allie Mellen said.

“That would be a fundamental shift for Microsoft’s philosophy and business model,” she added.

Operating exclusively outside the kernel may lower the risk of triggering mass outages but it was also “very limiting” for security vendors and could make their products “less effective” against hackers, Mellen added.

Operating within the kernel gave security companies more information about potential threats and enabled their defensive tools to activate before malware could take hold, she added.

An alternative option could be to replicate the model used by the open source operating system Linux, which uses a filtering mechanism that creates a segregated environment within the kernel in which software, including cyber defense tools, can run.

But the complexity of overhauling how other security software works with Windows means that any changes will be hard for regulators to police, and Microsoft will have strong incentives to favor its own products, rivals said.

It “sounds good on paper, but the devil is in the details,” said Matthew Prince, chief executive of digital services group Cloudflare.

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