Steering Microsoft clear of hackers

But what I'm getting at is that you have a lot of features built into the server to let somebody else get in from somewhere else. Granted, it's hard to break in, but once you have surmounted the fence or shield, isn't it true that someone can do a lot more damage?
If you are able to get into a system with a set of credentials, you can perform a set of actions based on those privileges. If you have administrative credentials, you have a very, very broad ability to do things. The focus, first of all, is making sure that there are valid pathways for people who are allowed to get on to do the things they need to do.

That's why it's a good idea to use either long passwords that are difficult to crack or combinations of certificates and passwords to only allow in the people who really have authorised access -- and then to make sure that there are no inadvertent backdoor ways for people to get in. There are always issues with people who have insecure passwords. If you have a password taped to the terminal monitor, that's the best way in.

A recent report maintained that Microsoft's dominance is by itself causing more critical vulnerabilities because of the potential for creating a cascade failure.
You're always going to have a limited number of systems people are using within their computing environment, because it makes economic sense to do so. There's Linux, Windows, Apple and other variants of Unix out there. There's plenty of opportunity for people to do damage on any of those systems, so I'm not sure how much credence I put in that report.

I guess their point is that companies that are standardised around Windows set up the potential for trouble down the road, because if there is an attack on one system, it's probably going to affect all systems on the network.
Again, I don't know that that's valid, because more and more of these systems are interrelated. If you look at the way applications are being built, there's a strong relationship between them. So if any system is down for any reason, that has the potential of impacting large parts of a company's business.

But then comes along a report that argues that customers should diversify. What do you think about that?
I'm not sure I buy that. When you do that, you introduce a great deal of complexity and a great impediment -- potentially -- that prevents people from doing their job on a day-to-day basis.