Wouldn't our networks be a much easier place to secure if we could prevent unpatched laptops from ever joining it? Back in the old days, there wasn't a lot of movement of equipment on and off the net. That stability meant that we pretty much knew what was going on at any point. Any bad code introduced into the network usually came from the Internet, and we could secure that connection through web filters and the like.

But these days we've got users hopping on and off our network, sometimes bringing back all kinds of nightmares in from the outside. There's no web filter in the world that can protect Stan in Accounting from walking right through the front door with his laptop fresh from Starbucks.

No web filter, maybe, but new tools that arrive with Server 2008 might be able to help. In this month's Windows Insider column for Redmond Magazine, I talk about Server 2008's Network Access Protection and how it can specifically help that painful "Stan" problem.

Check it out at: http://redmondmag.com/columns/article.asp?editorialsid=2479