In the last monthly security chat Mike Nash stated that beta2 was planned for
release in the first 6 months of calendar year 2006.
I can't speak for Microsoft--I'm just a volunteer here. I would certainly
expect there to be an automated mechanism to query the definition version and
date in place--it will, for example, interface with the Security Center in
Vista--in the same way that antivirus apps do now, I believe. But I don't
know how that information will be documented.
I'm not a developer, so I've never looked into this, but I wonder whether
looking at the mechanism used presently by the security center to check
antivirus signature dates would be useful in planning ahead?
You really probably need to be asking this in a developer-oriented group,
and perhaps one where folks have experience with the present security center.
I don't want to mislead anyone here--I don't know of any plans for
antispyware apps to interact with the security center in Windows XP.
However, I believe this is publicly announced for Vista, and it might well be
that looking at how that works would be instructive, even for an
implementation on XP.
I can't emphasize enough the unusual nature of this beta. The beta1 product
is largely code from Giant--the initial release came a few weeks after the
purchase of the company. There've been some significant changes to the beta1
product over the year, but the resources are going into work on beta2, which
will be written from the start with a whole range of standards and design
issues involved that the original product simply didn't handle. I don't know
how to advise you about a development effort in relation to beta1, except
that I would expect very substantial changes in beta2, and I believe that
beta1 is not likely to be documented further at this point.
