I just picked up from Toney Jennings blog at CoreTrace that Microsoft is including AppLocker in Windows 7.

“What is AppLocker?” I hear you ask.

It’s whitelisting. It’s a fairly simple flexible mechanism that allows the administrator to bolt down the desktop and prevent new stuff that isn’t authorized from running:

• It will stop normal malware dead in its tracks.
• Provide a simple way of preventing user anarchy where users load just about anything onto their desktops.
• It will help control semi-authorized applications like Skype, which can sometimes consume network bandwidth in an undesirable way.
• Keep unlicensed software from running (which is great for the small business and the corporation).
• Deliver a level of desktop configuration management possibly providing a means of running approved applications and implementing software updates when needed.
• Help meet security compliance standards.

This on its own is reason enough for all the corporations across the world to think in terms of acelerating their migration to Windows 7. It will be a huge boon to corproate computing and, at last, companies will be able to start throwing AV technology away and moving to whitelisting as the primary means of ensuring endpoint security. It has taken the longest time, but the AV shell game is coming to an end and whitelisting is taking its rightful place as the foundation of endpoint technology.

What Does This Mean for the Whitelisting Vendors?

The whitelisting vendors made their living by doing what Windows is now doing. The primary ones; Bit9 and CoreTrace, add value to simply locking down the desktop, so there’s no need for either vendor to feel threatened. Also security is not a Windows only thing. The big headache may belong to Windows in respect of malware, but vulnerabilities are everywhere. No versions of Unix or Linux I’m aware of have anything like AppLocker. I believe that the only OS that does is the iPod/iPhone version of OS X. So centrally managed corporate whitelisting has a place as long as there are multpiple operating systems.

What doesn’t have a place is AV technology. Now it has no real function at all. It’s time for the AV vendors to become resellers of whitelisting products.