Microsoft begins security CD giveaway in Japan

IDG News Service - The Japanese unit of Microsoft Corp. has begun giving away CDs containing a full set of updates for the Windows XP operating system, partly in response to prompting from the Japanese government after a recent series of virus and worm attacks.
The company began the giveaway at World PC Expo, Japan's biggest PC exhibition, which began in Chiba, outside of Tokyo, on Wednesday. Dressed in caps, red T-shirts and camouflage pants, the company's "security patrol" had handed out 25,000 copies of the CD by the end of yesterday, said Akiko Yamaguchi, a spokeswoman for Microsoft Ltd. in Tokyo. The show runs until tomorrow.
The company decided on the CD to make updates easier for narrowband Internet users, who made up the bulk of the calls to the company's security help line at around the time the Blaster Internet worm struck, Yamaguchi said. The CD also helps answer a request recently made by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).
"METI asked us to provide an easier way to get Windows updates," Yamaguchi said.
The CD contains all Windows XP security patches that have been released to date, XP Service Pack 1 and an agent that automatically checks the Windows Update site for future patches and software upgrades. The agent doesn't come preinstalled as part of Windows XP but can be downloaded from Microsoft's Web site. By default, the agent will automatically download future patches and updates and then ask the user if they should be installed, Yamaguchi said.
This is a step toward automatic updates of the operating system, which the company began considering after the Blaster worm attacked thousands of computers running unpatched versions of its operating system.
In Japan, the company responded to the Blaster worm by issuing around 200,000 CDs containing the 1.2MB patch that can insulate systems from attack by Blaster. The patch had been available on Windows Update since before the Blaster worm struck, although the chaos caused when the worm hit pointed to a large number of unprotected systems. The CD also contained antivirus software and was distributed by a handful of antivirus software companies.
The current campaign in Japan is being done solely by Microsoft; the CDs don't contain any third-party software, Yamaguchi said.
Following its debut at World PC Expo, the giveaway begins nationwide tomorrow, when the CDs will be made available at about 2,000 PC retailers. The giveaway runs until the end of next month, and the number of discs given away will be limited only by demand, Yamaguchi said.
Microsoft is also beginning a newspaper, radio and TV advertising campaign to carry home the "Protect your PC" message, Yamaguchi said. The company's toll-free security telephone hot line is also expanding its hours until 9 p.m. local time on weekdays and will operate on Saturdays and Sundays for the benefit of home users.
Japan has a large number of broadband users who connect at speeds up to 26Mbit/sec. over Digital Subscriber Line and 100Mbit/sec. over Fiber to the Home, but they're still outnumbered by narrowband users. There were 11.3 million broadband users in Japan at the end of July. At the same time, the top 15 service providers had a total of 19.7 million dial-up subscribers, according to information from Japan's Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications.