When Microsoft said that it hoped its new operating system, Windows 10, would be running on one billion machines just three years after its release people may have reasoned that this number was fairly ambitious. When Microsoft recently recanted the one billion mark, explaining that such a goal is very likely unattainable, most people probably said to themselves, “Told you so.”

At the same time Microsoft has done very well with its new OS, with Windows 10 becoming the fasting ever growing operating system for the company. Microsoft just released the latest numbers, saying that there are now over 400,000 people actively using Windows 10. Growth has in fact been slower since upgrading for free to Windows 10 ended in July, with reports saying that new monthly users went down to 16.6 million from 30 million.

Enterprise security

In a press release Yusuf Mehd, Corporate Vice President, Windows and Devices Group, gave his thoughts on Windows 10 going ahead from Microsoft’s Ignite conference. Mehd talked about security being paramount to Microsoft’s concerns.

A solution for this, at least for enterprise customers, is Microsoft’s new Secure Productive Enterprise (SPE) – an enterprise package with heightened focus on security. This will include Microsoft’s new Windows Defender Application Guard, an enterprise feature for Microsoft’s Edge browser that, “Uses virtualization-based security technology to protect against advanced attacks coming from the Internet.”

This, says Microsoft, makes the world’s safest browser even safer. “This level of protection has never been more important, as the majority of attacks start in the browser,” the company added.

Microsoft says that unlike other browsers out there that use sandboxes for security, “Application Guard isolates the browser and employee activity using a hardware-based container to prevent malicious code from impacting the device and moving across the enterprise network.” The enterprise customer remains malware free, says Microsoft, and even if an untrusted site loads malware it won’t get past the container to steal data or compromise a network.

Microsoft also announced the release of Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (WDATP), cloud based security analytics available to businesses from Microsoft’s Security Graph.

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