Microsoft is sitting on an absolute gold mine of information. The Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) running on billions of computers worldwide and every Windows Update process sends a ton of non-personal telemetry back to Microsoft Central. This data could help antivirus companies and academic researchers develop better ways to fight malware. In a keynote speech for the 9th IEEE International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (
Malware 2014 for short), Microsoft's Dennis Batchelder explained just what the software giant plans to do with all that data—and it's not what you might expect.
Sharing Is Good
At last year's conference, Batchelder, as Research Director of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, went into great detail about just what Microsoft can determine from the immense cache of data flowing in from the MSRT. Much of his team's current activities were inspired by the discussion that arose from that presentation.
