Security Guru Leaves Microsoft

Amid the major shake-ups in management at Microsoft, one of the company's more notable security guru's, Jesper Johansson, announced that he is leaving the company to work for the online retailer giant Amazon.com. Johansson said that as of September 5 he will become the Prinicipal Security Program Manager at Amazon.

Reflecting on his past 5 years of employment at Microsoft, Johansson wrote in an email to Microsoft employees (part of which was posted to his blog ), "This was a very difficult decision for me and has taken a long time to make. All in all, I have had a great five years to look back at. So much has changed in security at the company since I came here. It has been a remarkable ride to see the turn-around and having been able to play part of if for this long. The hardest part of this transition will be not being part of this ride any longer and not being able to work with all the great people I have worked with here."

During his time at Microsoft Johansson served as a Senior Security Strategist in the company's security technology unit. Johansson also co-authored a book, "Protect Your Windows Network," with Steve Riley who also works in Microsoft's security technology unit. Mark Russinovich, who recently joined Microsoft as part of the acquisition of Winternals and Sysinternals , said of the book that "Jesper and Steve have done an outstanding job of covering the myriad of issues you must deal with to implement an effective network security policy. If you care about security this book is a must have."