Many people don't know they are eligible for complimentary Microsoft software and services. You can help spread the word to ensure that people in your community are making the best of what's available to them.
Not-for-profit donations
Microsoft and many other suppliers offer technology donations through TechSoup. Microsoft has donated around $17,000,000 worth of technology to NZ nonprofits through this programme.
Software startups
Microsoft's BizSpark programme provides complimentary software, cloud services and access to a community of partners around the world who are involved in supporting software-fueled innovation and the next generation of technology entrepreneurs.
Anti-virus software
For home users and small businesses, Microsoft Security Essentials is a complimentary download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and is automatically updated to protect Windows PCs with the latest anti-malware technology.
Māori language packs
Complimentary Māori language packs are available for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office are available to translate commonly-used features, giving people the choice to use the technology in a language that is familiar.
Peer to peer file sharing
The Copyright Act was recently amended to discourage unlawful peer to peer file sharing. We've written an article to help internet account holders get ready.
With compliments
Microsoft offers a number of services free of charge to help people live and work a little smarter. Here’s a quick overview of technology to make life a little simpler and more fun. More than a million Kiwis use at least one of these services, and you'll probably find something that's useful for you and your community.
Take control of your privacy
For Privacy Awareness Week this year, we featured a number of tips and tricks to help you keep safer and more secure online.
In 2002, Bill Gates wrote an email to all Microsoft employees that made trustworthy computing – including security, privacy and reliability – the top priority for the company. Ten years on, Microsoft continues its dedication to these objectives, which we refer to as the Trustworthy Computing initiative.
The objective is to improve our products and processes, and to provide transparency about what we do. It's not about marketing assurances or slogans. It's about our culture as an organisation, and allowing people to make informed decisions about trust as it relates to their own individual context.
Security Development Lifecycle
One of the best-known outcomes of the trustworthy computing culture at Microsoft has been the implementation and publication of the Security Development Lifecycle, which incorporates privacy by design. It is a company-wide, mandatory continuous improvement policy. As well as being used within Microsoft, it is openly available for analysis, constructive criticism, and industry adoption.
There is strong evidence that the Security Development Lifecycle has made a difference. Products developed using this methodology have delivered more secure and private computing experiences. For example, in 2002 Microsoft had the highest total of security vulnerability disclosures across its product portfolio. But in recent years the company has moved down the list even while the product portfolio has grown. This is illustrated on the chart below.
Read more
This week Microsoft was pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the Digital Identity Conference 2012 on Managing Digital Identity in a Networked World, organised by the Victoria University of Wellington.
There are many facets to the dialogue on digital identity. It is woven of philosophy, context, technology, security, privacy, and individual rights and freedoms.
Looking at the practical needs for IT systems, people need access to information and IT resources to get their job done. But if the wrong people get access, there can be serious consequences. Reliable identity information is essential for IT systems to know who should have access to what. As we move to a digital-first mind-set, organisations can save significant time and improve reliability of identity verification by moving to a single set of trusted client credentials and relying on a single agency’s identity information - provided that the correct policy and technology settings are in place to protect individuals.
This article briefly discusses some of the practical issues relating to identity management in IT systems, and Microsoft technology that can help.
The Microsoft Imagine Cup is a competition that encourages students to solve the world's toughest problems.
Visual impairment is one of those, and Team Mobile Eye from AUT took on the challenge. Their winning solution is a mobile app to assist people with visual impairment to “see” the world around them, through a combination of computer intelligence and crowd-sourced audio support.
Congratulations to Team Mobile Eye for winning the Imagine Cup NZ 2012!
It was an intense competition this year. From an initial 400 entries across the country, four very strong teams were chosen from to contest the final stage of the NZ 2012 contest. These were Thought-Wired, Connect, Aura and Mobile Eye. You're all awesome.
For those that attended I know you’d agree that the competition was massive – we were delighted to pack out the Auckland Town Hall with more than 1,000 people for the event. What great enthusiasm for these innovators who will lead NZ's future.
Yesterday I was honoured to have an opportunity to speak briefly at the Privacy Commissioner's Privacy Forum, titled "Think Big? Privacy in the age of big data".
A question was put to a panel by Vikram Kumar from InternetNZ as follows: “There are many real privacy risks in relation to cloud services. There also many misconceptions. What do you think is the single greatest risk and the single biggest misconception?”
Cloud services can give rise to privacy issues, but perhaps the biggest misconception is that privacy issues arise because a service is deployed in a cloud.
People need to make decisions about which services to trust. This means weighing up the characteristics of a given provider and service against what is relevant and important to them, or to their organisation. To approach decisions in a principled way, it is critical not to over-simplify. We need to understand the true sources of potential issues.
Most of us disclose a lot of private information on the Internet without really thinking about it. What we search for, the links we click, and our email can be very personal.
In an ideal world, we would all read and understand the privacy statement of each company whose services we use. We would check to see to what extent they limit themselves to using our information only to serve us, or whether they claim rights to use our information for their own purposes.
But it's asking a lot of people to read long statements when they're often just wanting to get things done. And it’s not always obvious who is collecting this information about us. Most of us make decisions about who we trust with our personal information at a simpler level.
How do you decide who to trust?
I think about four simple things that are likely to influence how a company (or other organisation) will respect my privacy preferences over time. I think about their motivations, leadership, discipline, and track record.
It’s Privacy Awareness Week in New Zealand from Sunday 29 April.
Privacy on the Internet is something that a lot of people are interested in, but there are few simple explanations of the issues.
In this article I’d like to explain a bit about how your activity on the Internet is tracked, and what you can do about it.
When you look at a website, it’s quite usual for your web browser to automatically communicate with several other websites at the same time. The site you want to look at might also connect to social networking sites, show advertising from other sites, and use third-party analytics to profile you. Here’s a simplified diagram to show how a tracking and advertising company might build a profile based on your activity tracked across multiple websites.
Like the example in the diagram, most of this is quite benign. Maybe I want to see the highest bidder’s most relevant camera advertisements. But if you’re like me, you may prefer that it just doesn’t happen.
Cloud computing is not just being adopted by the business community in New Zealand but has also made a significant impact in not-for-profit organizations (NFP) across the country. Attendees of the Connecting Communities conference in Christchurch on 29 February 2012 learnt of several NFPs who have used the Microsoft cloud as a key enabler of both the vision and transformation of their organizations. The NFP focused conference was hosted by Microsoft New Zealand in association with Social Development Partners, as part of Microsoft New Zealand’s programme of activities supporting NFPs to build their IT capability.
This week Microsoft’s Chief Privacy Officer Brendon Lynch was home in New Zealand to discuss privacy. Originally from Paeroa but now based at Microsoft's global headquarters in Redmond, Brendon is part of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing initiative that was established by Bill Gates in 2002.
Bill Gates said then that Trustworthy Computing – reliability, security, privacy and business integrity – is the “highest priority for the company and for our industry over the next decade”.
Brendon is responsible for all aspects of Microsoft's privacy programme, including the creation and implementation of policies designed to protect customer privacy for products and services that are used by millions of consumers and organisations around the world. He also works to provide transparency on Microsoft’s approach, and to encourage broad adoption of privacy standards.
Sophisticated questions from participants at discussions in Auckland and Wellington show that there is a strong interest in privacy in New Zealand.
Privacy breaches involving technology have made headline news this year, and it's no surprise that identity theft and reputation are serious concerns.We heard that privacy is a necessary foundation for freedom of speech. Privacy expectations are individual. Most people are pragmatic and are willing to provide personal information to a trusted party in exchange for value, but some people have much higher expectations of privacy than others.
People who work hard on running New Zealand's 400,000 small and medium enterprises are accustomed to constant change, and this is something they share with those who work in the technology sector. Bill Gates once said, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years, and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10.”
Faster broadband access is being deployed nationwide, and it's the perfect complement to better approaches to work that have been made possible by technology. Businesses have new opportunities to find customers, to improve their services, and to be more productive. Technology professionals have new opportunities to help them. These changes may not seem urgent compared to the many other demands on time, but they are coming and it's time to learn about them and make plans.
We are offering two free road shows to provide an update on the latest in Microsoft technology for small businesses. We'll be visiting Tauranga, Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and Christchurch from 1 to 9 November 2011.
On Tuesday, InternetNZ will host a debate about New Zealand's Digital Future. In parallel, InternetNZ has released a discussion document titled Future: Digital. Vikram Kumar explains, “Future: Digital is about the need for a shared, common vision for where New Zealand will be in 10 to 20 years time. The economic opportunity is for high growth, exports, jobs, productivity, wages, returns and prosperity. The social, cultural, environmental and government impacts are profound. All elements have to be woven together to form a fabric of fundamental change.” These are powerful themes to work from to plan how we can contribute to our country reaching its potential. Since Microsoft’s inception, we have been excited about technology’s role in building a better future. We would like to see New Zealand make the best of these opportunities. An impressive panel of political party spokespeople and commentators is participating in the debate. It promises to be a great event.