At the Vista kickoff, Steve Ballmer was asked, "How important is BitLocker?" In his typical booming response, Ballmer said, "hugely important." For those of you that don't know, BitLocker is Vista's tool for whole disk encryption. It was created as a direct response to the plethora of lost data resulting from lost or stolen laptops. BitLocker provides protection against data loss by encrypting the entire disk, thus protecting data from prying eyes.

This is a particularly interesting response in light of the fact that BitLocker is only available via Microsoft's Software Assurance (SA) program aimed at large enterprises and the Ultimate version. Ultimate carries a pricing premium of 66% over the Home Premium version, includes every option of both home and business versions and is not targeted at typical home or SMB users. This means that small businesses and home users of Vista won't get the benefit of BitLocker's protection. If Steve Ballmer says it is hugely important, then why is Microsoft excluding so many of its clients from one of the major security functions on Vista?

Are there pieces missing which would be required for the tool to work with home or small and midsize business users (such as Web-based key recovery), or is it part of Microsoft's attempt to sell up to SA across the board, locking more users in for the long term?

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The possibility of BitLocker system is not available for every one. According to Steve blamer's statements in a local conference meeting "that piracy is the reason for slow Vista sales. Could there be any other reason".
From the statement we will know how they will provide better bitLocker system on Windows vista.
Yeah...! we will waiting for another revolution
Posted by Mr.Mohamed Arif
Manager
Business research intelligence(http://Http://arrif.blogspo...)

One of the advantages of BitLocker is that it supports Trusted Platform Module (TPM). TPM is a microchip that supports several advanced security features, such as storing encryption keys, digital certificates and passwords. TPM doesn't rely on the operating system, so it's not as susceptible to software vulnerabilities and attacks as other methods. It requires RSA SHA-1 and HMAC cryptographic algorithms. BitLocker supports TPM version 1.2 or higher.

Kevin,

http://www.virtela.com