Today they announced another step in their plans to distance themselves from the NSA and the spying they were doing. According to a blog post made by Matt Thomlinson, VP of Trustworthy Computing Security Outlook.com will now be protected by TLS (Transport Layer Security). This means that emails will be encrypted as they are sent between two servers that both support TLS. If one of the pair does not support it, the email will usually be sent without the protection of TLS. Sometimes that means it is sent in the clear, other times it is simply sent by a less secure means.

Of course that does not mean that the emails you store in Microsoft’s data centers are protected from access, or that Law Enforcement cannot get to your data. This just means that the email will not be as easy to intercept and read as it has been in the past. Still this move is a good one and brings Outlook.com up to par with most of the other cloud email services out there.

In the end all of this work is intended to remove some of the tarnish that has hit Microsoft’s reputation during Steve Ballmer’s reign. That does not mean that all of this does not have a very real and positive effect on Microsoft’s products which in turn is good for consumers and the market. Now let’s hope they feel that the return of Technet is in the best interest…

Tell us what you think in our Forum