Microsoft used its TechEd IT Forum conference here to announce the general availability of its new Forefront Server Security Management Console, a centralized, Web-based management solution for onsite or remote administration of its messaging and collaboration security solutions.

The console, a Web-based tool, helps businesses centrally manage, configure, report on and update multiple deployments of Forefront Security for Exchange Server and Forefront Security for SharePoint, as well as Microsoft Antigen products, said teve Brown, Microsoft’s director of security and access product management. It also supports Exchange 2007 Cluster Continuous Replication and integrates with Windows Server 2003 and SQL 2005.

Microsoft and the Daisy Consortium are working together to create a text-to-audio translation plug-in for visually impaired users of Open XML-enabled Microsoft Word documents. The resulting "Save as Daisy" (Digital Accessible Information System) plug-in for Microsoft Word will make it possible to convert Open XML-based documents into Daisy XML, a standard for reading and publishing navigable multimedia content used by individuals who are visually impaired, Reed Shaffner product manager for Microsoft Office Word and accessibility, told eWEEK in an interview at the Microsoft TechEd: IT Forum conference.

We’re always a little bummed when we get an email from a reader asking for help with lost email. First, we get so many messages that sometimes it can take us a long time to get to an individual letter. Second, there’s often not a lot that can be done. Sometimes, though, we can help.

Read this OutlookPower article.

The OpenDocument Foundation–a group whose name and charter would lead one to believe that it was backing the OpenDocument Format (ODF), but which ended up backing a different document format instead–has closed its doors. Sam Hiser, a systems consultant who was Vice President & Director Business Affairs at the OpenDocument Foundation, confirmed that ODF is closing its doors. Hiser and a number of the other OpenDocument Foundation backers earlier this year decided to throw their weight behind a Worldwide Web Consortium document standard, the Compound Document Format (CDF), and back away from ODF.

IBM, Sun Microsystems, Google and other ODF backers are continuing in their campaign to fight OOXML. Microsoft is pushing for standards recognition for OOXML, in large part, so that Office 2007, which uses OOXML as its default file format, will qualify for lucrative government and commercial IT contracts that call for "open," "standards-based" products. The pro-ODF camp is trying to thwart OOXML in the hopes of gaining more market share for StarOffice, OpenOffice, Google Docs & Spreadsheets and other products that compete with Microsoft Office. Office still has more than 90 percent of the Windows desktop-productivity-suite market.

Bill Gates focused largely on future innovations to come out of Microsoft as he presided over his last annual shareholders meeting as full-time chairman, leaving his colleagues to address questions about the threat from Google’s Android, piracy in China, and the affects of the European Commission’s antitrust ruling.

Gates is in the process of shifting his time away from running the software giant and toward contributing more time to his charitable foundation. Next year, he’ll serve only part-time as chairman of Microsoft. Gates and other executives addressed a crowd of about 500 people at the meeting, held in downtown Seattle on Tuesday.

Microsoft is releasing the 2007 Office Security Guide, which gives IT administrators guidance for configuring the settings in Microsoft Office 2007 so that it can be deployed and managed more securely. Microsoft says the guide provides prescriptive Group Policy setting and security configuration recommendations to strengthen the security of computers running the 2007 Microsoft Office release on Windows Vista or Windows XP in domain-based environments, can be found here.

It is the result of a year’s worth of work with customers, partners and government agencies, and follows a public beta release this summer, Josh Edwards, technical product manager for Microsoft Office, told eWEEK in an interview at the TechEd IT Forum conference.

Microsoft has released its November security updates, fixing a critical Windows bug that has been exploited by online criminals.

Microsoft released just two security updates this month, but security experts say that IT staff will want to install both of them as quickly as possible. The MS07-061 update is particularly critical because the flaw it repairs has been seen in Web-based attack code, said Amol Sarwate, manager of Qualys’s vulnerability research lab. "This was a zero day [flaw] that was being used in the wild by hackers," he said.

European Union regulators have launched an in-depth investigation into Google’s $3.1bn takeover of online advertising firm DoubleClick. The EU Commission said its initial probe had shown the deal would raise competition concerns.

It has set itself a deadline of 2 April 2008 to reach a decision. Google said it would work with the Commission to show how the acquisition would benefit publishers, advertisers and consumers.

Gemalto and Lexar, a subsidiary of Micron Technology, introduced the Smart Enterprise Guardian, a unique USB device that natively incorporates industry standards for protecting digital identities and sensitive documents. The SEG combines Gemalto’s .NET-based solution and Lexar’s hardware-based memory encryption technology to provide unrivaled secure mobility for SMBs and Enterprises.

A loophole in the random number generator of Windows 2000 can expose users’ email, password and credit card details, university researchers claim. "This is not a theoretical discovery. Anyone who exploits this security loophole can definitely access this information on other computers," said Dr. Benny Pinkas from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Haifa.

Pinkas said all correspondence that emanated from a computer using Windows 2000 is susceptible to tracking. According to the researchers, which also included university graduate students, this loophole enables hackers to access information that was sent from the computer prior to the security breach and even information that is no longer stored on the computer.