At the RSA Conference last week, Chairman Bill Gates outlined security improvements from Microsoft and reiterated the fact that security is our number one priority.  You can get the transcript and PPT here.  It is actually an interesting read.

Here are some of his statements in the beginning of the talk:
So the goal of Microsoft is to invest in building these software platforms. We spend US$6 billion a year now in our R&D budget, which is the largest technology R&D budget in the world. And there are all sorts of exciting things that are coming out of this: The move toward systems that will recognize speech, that will use ink, much better ways of doing business intelligence and workflow, systems that are going to be lots of fun to use and let people communicate in new ways.

And the rest of this week, I'm off at five different universities talking about some of these breakthrough opportunities and really trying to make sure that kids coming out of school are excited about working on these things and see the opportunities there.

But the security topic is, I think, the most important topic -- to make sure that this happens. Certainly, if you look at our resources and what's the biggest part of that R&D investment at Microsoft right now, it's focused on security. Our research group is making advances that are very important here. Our product teams change the processes they've used. Everything we're doing has been impacted, and I think over the last two years we have made a lot of progress.

One of the topics was the innovation around Windows XP SP2.  I’ll have some future announcements about presentations that we are doing on this topic.  XP SP2 is much more than a Service Pack and it could impact many - specifically end-users, administrators, architects, and developers.  It will also have an impact on .NET. But it will all be well worth it.  Be sure to regularly check out the Microsoft Security Developer Center which has several resources on this and other related topics.