Company rethinks strategy as threat to bottom line grows. Microsoft Corp.’s offer of cash bounties for informants who help it collar virus-writers reflects more than just an escalation of the war on those who would exploit the dominant power in software. The campaign reveals just how much of a threat to Microsoft’s bottom line security flaws now represent. WHEN THE BLASTER WORM hobbled hundreds of thousands of computers around the world in August — only the latest plague to exploit a flaw in Windows operating systems — it also hurt Microsoft’s ability to book new contracts with corporate customers. (MSNBC is a Microsoft – NBC joint venture.) For the first time, it seemed, flaws in Microsoft’s software were translating into flaws in the company’s business model. “It’s now starting to move from being a problem that they used to hear anecdotally to a problem they can now measure the impact of,” said Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm. Full Story
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