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Microsoft Announces Winners

Nycil George, Jun 30, 2006 2039 hrs IST

Microsoft India has announced that one Varun Sharma has won its Security Shootout contest, after competing with over 11,200 developers...

Microsoft India has announced that one Varun Sharma has won its Security Shootout contest. After competing with over 11,200 developers from across India, and after undergoing three strenuous rounds of secure coding, Varun Sharma is now the proud owner of a customized Scorpio Passion. Security Shootout was designed specially for the growing developer community in the country, and has been a great success in its first year of launch. The initiative is aimed at providing budding developers an opportunity to gain knowledge on how to write secure code, and develop secure software applications. Security Shootout is part of Microsoft's ongoing security mobilization efforts, under which it works closely with partners and customers to promote software security. Vimal Rajyaguru and Ashwath Govindan emerged as the first and second Runners-up respectively, and were presented a Toshiba M4 laptop each. Through the contest, the participants won over 7,500 prizes including Pocket PCs and 80GB USB 2.0-powered external hard disk drives. The top 500 participants received security certification vouchers that will help them hone their code development skills over a long term. According to Ms Sheila Gulati, director - developer platform and evangelism, Microsoft India, "Security is of paramount importance in today's technology-driven world. Through our Trustworthy Computing Program, we have been making significant investments at all stages of the process - product development, deployment, and customer awareness. The security shootout contest was designed to take this a level deeper, and educate India's large developer community on the need for focusing on security in every sphere of their work. We believe that this will help drive deeper skills among Indian technologists, and help address the security issue at the most fundamental level." Microsoft is reportedly making significant investments in the area of security, and has initiated the Trustworthy Computing Initiative towards this. Under this initiative, Microsoft is working on three specific areas - technology investments, wherein it is committed to providing customers and users with the most secure products; prescriptive guidance that involves educating and empowering people; and industry partnerships under which the company is working with the government and industry to evolve security laws and standards.