It took one day. On Thursday, Microsoft announced that, henceforth, you couldn't get Windows updates without a check to make sure your Windows software was properly registered. On Friday, the first hack showed up on boingboing.

Other hacks of Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) followed quickly.

One admin reports that he was unable to get WindowsUpdate to work with a registered system till he disabled the WGA addin in Internet Explorer.

So what does this have to do with e-mail security?

Plenty. If Microsoft can't protect itself, do you really think it can protect you? While you absolutely need firewalls and antivirus software on every Microsoft Windows-based workstation and server, it's not enough.

Make sure the sentinels at your network border... routers, gateways, anti-spam appliances and other proxies... are definitively non-Windows devices.

Virtually any non-Windows product will add a level of protection to a Windows network that it otherwise doesn't enjoy.

As to the future of WGA... many greybeards who were micro-computing at Microsoft's genesis find its anti-piracy crusade to be sadly disingenuous