Gates outlines new steps to improve Internet security

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Trying to simplify online transactions and make them safer, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates showed off a tool that manages all the usernames and passwords that people and companies use to unlock the doors of the Internet.

Gates, the company’s co-founder and chief software architect, also broadly discussed Microsoft’s efforts to improve security in its upcoming Windows Vista operating system and the tech industry’s initiatives aimed at stopping malicious software, hackers and other dangers.

“We’ve all got a common challenge here, yet an amazing opportunity to let these digital systems be used in the broadest way,” Gates said Tuesday at the RSA computer security conference.

Gates highlighted a technology dubbed InfoCard that will help computer users corral their identifying information without running the risk of losing it. It also could be used by companies looking to improve ways of granting access to their networks.

InfoCard is the Redmond, Wash.-based company’s latest attempt at so-called identification and authentication services. The first, Passport, was criticized because Microsoft created, centrally stored and controlled a single identity that was supposed to be used on sites across the Web.

InfoCard, on the other hand, is more of a container that holds identities both created by the user and the businesses on the Web. Login information for Passport could be stored there, as could the username, password and other personal details for an auction or sales site.

In a demonstration, a user logged into an e-commerce site simply by clicking on an InfoCard button on the Web page and choosing among the various identities — or “cards” — presented for that user. Once an identity “card” is selected, he was logged in.

In another example using the same site, the user called up another identity — one created by the site owner — to receive a discount on the purchase.

“InfoCard is about making sure that if you have a series of identities, you can have a container kind of like a wallet that you can use to present it at the right place,” said Michael Nash, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Security Technology Unit.

By making passwords easier to manage, users could be less likely to repeatedly use the same ones, a practice that exposes them to problems should one site get hacked.