A March 22, 2007 memo issued by the Executive Office of the President mandates deployment of secure operating systems for the federal government. NSA, NIST, SANS and others have been urging common secure configurations for software, including operating systems and applications, for years. All government IT shops should now get that same wording in all new contracts. The Microsoft OS mandate is a good start, but we also need the secure configs with our other vendors – mandate or not. Even if that isn’t the case, state and local governments should go in that direction anyway, since it makes sense.”]