Microsoft said last year that it was tightening security to fend off the NSA and others who would scoop up your data, and today it fulfilled that promise with moves that should improve real-world security. The company now encrypts both incoming and outgoing Outlook.com email when it’s in transit . So long as the other end also supports this encryption (Gmail and other big names do), snoops can’t easily intercept messages in mid-flight. Microsoft is also implementing Perfect Forward Secrecy in both Outlook.com and OneDrive, which gives each connection a unique security key — even if people do crack a code, they won’t have a complete picture of your email or cloud storage. Alongside the improved protection, Microsoft is also eager to show governments that it’s not creating back doors for spies. The developer has opened a Transparency Center at its Redmond headquarters that will let officials look at source code and otherwise verify that Microsoft isn’t purposefully including vulnerabilities. The tech giant would rather not worry about spying in the first place , but its new Center may prevent some of the company’s bigger customers (and their cash) from jumping ship . Filed under: Internet , Microsoft Comments Source: Microsoft on the Issues

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Microsoft’s new encryption makes it tougher to spy on your email

For the last year or so, Samsung has been touting a “paradigm shift” in the way it constructs flash memory: from a horizontal to a vertical arrangement of cells, or what it calls 3D V-NAND . Now, judging from reviews of the first V-NAND consumer SSDs, the 850 Pro range, it looks like this shift has resulted in a geniune and unequivocal boost to performance. Compared to synthetic and real-world scores from rival drives, made by the likes of Intel and Crucial, Sammy’s 850 Pro “led the pack almost across the board, ” according to HotHardware . Then again, Tom’s Hardware noted that Samsung is now pushing the limits of the SATA interface, such that other products are “within a stone’s throw” of the the 850 Pro’s scores (at least until a PCI Express version comes around). What’s more, all the reviews listed below highlighted the fact that the new line-up comes at a significant premium, even when you factor in Samsung’s nice 10-year warranty. The 128GB drive costs $130, while the maxed-out 1TB option costs $730, equating to a cost per gigabyte that is almost twice as high as other recent drives that lack the cutting-edge NAND (such as Crucial’s MX100). Actual street pricing, meanwhile, will only be established over the course of this month, as the 850 Pro starts to become widely available. Reviews of the Samsung 850 Pro SSD: HotHardware TechSpot The SSD Review The Tech Report Tom’s Hardware Filed under: Storage , Samsung Comments

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Samsung’s new consumer SSDs shoot to the top of the benchmark league