Microsoft redoubles its efforts to protect our data and opens its first transparency center

The PRISM scandal and Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA spying have raised the issue of the privacy of our data and the security of the services we use daily in the spotlight. Beyond the US government, technology companies are the main defendants and those most interested in dispelling any hint of doubt about their products and services, something they have been working on for some time.

In that vein, Microsoft is trying to strengthen encryption across its networks and services in an effort to protect data from users and discourage government agencies from accessing it by any means other than through proper legal procedures.With that goal in mind, they have announced three important milestones in their quest to improve their security and increase the transparency of the company.

The first of these is that Outlook.com is now fully protected using the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol, encrypting all mail, both incoming and outgoing. This means that every time we send an email it will be encrypted and will be protected on its journey to the recipient. In addition, support for encryption through PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy) has been added, which means adding an extra layer of security by using a different encryption key for each connection.

This last mechanism has also been added to OneDrive Thanks to it, the files that we save in the cloud storage service of those from Redmond will now be fully protected whether we access it from the web, or from our mobile phones or if we are synchronizing files from one of its multiple clients.

Finally, Microsoft has opened its first center on its Redmond campus 'Microsoft Transparency Center' In these centers the company will allow governments can review the source code of their key products to confirm the integrity of the products and ensure that there are no backdoors that could affect their security. It will not be the only one of its kind, since the opening of a similar center in Brussels and other additional ones are planned to follow.

Via | Microsoft Image | Microsoft Azure Blog