Administering Windows Vista Security-The Big Surprises

Mark Minasi

Byron Hynes

Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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© 2007 Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-0-470-10832-1

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is to my mother, Virginia Marie Minasi, nee Hartley. While she is no longer with us, my brothers and I carry much of what she was inside of us and always will. Mom, we miss you, and we hope that where you've gone you've found some rest, and who knows, maybe a few wonderful "big surprises" of your own.

Acknowledgments

As the Introduction will describe, I got the idea for this book in late June 2006 and knew almost instantly that if it were to be written, it had to be written fast. You see, once an author's finished with his work, there's lots more to do, months more ahead of editing, revisions, layout, galleys, printing, binding, boxing, and trucking off to your nearby bookstore. But I also knew that this book needed to be out by the end of 2006, as it deals with the things that I felt all Vista administrators needed to know, preferably before they even start deploying Vista.

(Don't misunderstand-that absolutely doesn't mean that if you're looking at this in August 2007 you're wasting your time. XP's a pretty good desktop OS, and I think it'll be quite some time before most folks even look at Vista. No matter what time you start learning how to administer Vista, I believe this will be a useful book. I just wanted to be sure to get it into the hands of the early adopters.)

But before anything happens in the publishing industry, there is much to be done in terms of getting the wheels turning, and that, too, takes time. So I talked to my development editor, Tom Cirtin, and begged him to grease the gears of the Great Machine that is book publishing. Tom agreed to, and as I write this, it looks as if this book will indeed appear in your bookstore before the coming of 2007. That happened with the help of many people.

First, my co-authors, Byron Hynes and Jennifer Allen, took up the task of writing a chapter each to fill out the book, and in very short time. I greatly appreciate their doing that in such good time, particularly inasmuch as they've already got day jobs! My editors-Tom Cirtin, Rachel Gunn, and Cheryl Hauser-sanded my rough drafts into smooth shape in record time, and tech editors John Mueller and Russ Mullen caught me when I slipped up while still providing moral support. (We're all still figuring Vista out. And I suspect that we will be for quite a while, given that it's a near-complete rewrite of XP.) Craig Woods laid out the pages and made the book look good.

One thing that greatly sped up this process was the amount of information I got from the folks inside Microsoft. In following the development process of some earlier versions of Windows, I have sadly come to expect fairly unresponsive, terse answers to my questions, but most of that changed quite significantly during the Vista beta process. I found not only a much more open attitude but a real interest in what people would need from Vista as well. It was sometimes strange to find the roles of interviewer and interviewee switched, as someone responsible for some small but important part of Vista would answer a question with "Well, how do you think we should solve such-and-such problem?" I hope that openness works to Microsoft's benefit and helps lead Vista to real success.

But I can't forget one of the other essential sources of support: my assistant, Jean Snead. Without her, the press of constant things-in-need-of-fixing would keep me from doing anything. Finally, thanks to all of you for buying my books; if you folks weren't so good about that, I don't think this book would have seen the light of day. My thanks to all!