Happy 10th Birthday SDL

Many Happy Returns

Or successful continuations, if that's your programming paradigm of choice. They're busily blowing out candles and popping the fizz over at Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle Group. It's exactly ten years to the day since William Henry "Bill" Gates III,

[...] in response to customer feedback, grabbed his dilemma by the horns, and issued a back-me-or-sack-you directive known lovingly as Trustworthy Computing. Company-wide memos like this were rare. This one went into every department, as company-wide memos are wont to do, and demanded sweeping improvements in the "four pillars" on which the customer experience is based: security, privacy, reliability, and business integrity.

(from my Security 101: Part 2 a couple of years ago).

The Microsoft SDL Blog is itself celebrating with an appropriately crusty reminiscence, Trustworthy Computing’s 10 Year Milestone – Reflecting on Humble Beginnings, by Steve Lipner, Senior Director of Security Engineering Strategy, on behalf of the rest of the Trustworthy Computing team; frankly outdone by Principal Cybersecurity Architect Michael Howard's comprehensive memoir What a Journey It Has Been, and noted in turn by David Burt at the Microsoft Privacy & Safety TechNet blog among countless other well- (and ill-!) wishers.

[As an aside, while you're checking out those accounts, the new SDL post Compiler Security Enhancements in Visual Studio 11 by Tim Burrell (MSEC security science) gives a rare preview of the new /sdl and updated /GS switches.]

Let's join in wishing the Microsoft SDL another ten years of security enhancement and threat mitigation!

Picture of His Billness courtesy of Wikipedia.