Redmond recently unleashed the preview version of Windows 8.1 Enterprise, and its focus these past few weeks has firmly and squarely been on businesses and organizations.
The software titan has once again detailed the many security improvements in the upcoming OS.
The idea here is to help organizations and businesses plan their upgrade from Windows XP to its newest operating system. And to help with the transition, the technology giant has built in some new security features in order to make Windows 8.1 PCs much more secure for those organizations.
Microsoft outlined the new and improved security options in Windows 8.1 in a brand new blog post. Most of these were previously confirmed like support for biometric access to PCs.
The technology titan believes that the biometrics technology is set to replace regular passwords over time. Windows 8.1 PCs now support capacitive full-fingerprint hardware, along with biometric APIs for opening Windows 8 apps:
“Before, we supported biometrics when a customer first signed into the device. Now any time a user sees a Windows credential prompt, he or she can use biometrics, effectively eliminating the password for logging into secure sites and in-app user account validations.”
The software titan also plans to launch a new version of its Windows Defender security software with Windows 8.1. The company said:
“We are introducing high performance behavior monitoring to Windows Defender that enable Defender to detect certain bad behaviors in memory, the registry, or the file system; even before signatures have been created.”
Windows 8.1 also bring to the table additional Trusted Platform Mobile support, and the company has outlined a goal to have all Windows devices require TPM 2.0 by January 2015.
This would allow companies and enterprises let their employees bring their own PCs to work in the confidence that these devices can easily work with their own corporate security setups. The upcoming OS also includes new encryption, data security and remote data removal options.
