Great post, thanks. What we see with Microsoft, whether we are a user of that particular brand of technology or not, is the cutting edge battle of hacker capability verses available security. Both are at their leading edge, and the war goes back and forth. Most importantly as of late, user awareness has been raised, being essential as we head into an era of more sophisticated operating systems, and more sophisticated attacks.
Ultimately we will see a clearing of the smoke, and more definitive labeling of the differences between "white hat" and "black hat" hackers, with most existing "hackers" eventually being categorized as "black hat", and "white hat" "blocking" becomes more of a full time exclusive profession. It's been amazing to see, the rise of the hackers against innocent unsuspecting users in just the last 5 years, but it's only gotten worse and is at an all time high now. We can only hope we continue to win that bleeding edge war, because it unfortunately isn't going away, especially as most attacks come from foreign lands, and foreign lands is where the www is expanding. I trust that we will. It will take a coordinated effort, and less acceptance of ALL illegal or immoral online activity.
"...with most existing "hackers" eventually being categorized as "black hat", and "white hat" "blocking" becomes more of a full time exclusive profession."
You addressed what I brought up as it was being written. If by "white hat," you mean friendly testers who look for vulnerabilities so developers can plug them, that's the one most important key (no pun intended) to good security, I think--that and maybe a few of the kinds of steps taken in Chapter 8 (NISPOM) security requirements.