Gates to Keynote First Security Conference.

As Microsoft Corp increases its efforts to market itself as a security-conscious company, its chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates is to keynote the RSA Security Conference in February for the first time.

There's no word yet on the subject of Gates's speech. The latest news on Windows XP Service Pack 2, which Microsoft promises will beef up the operating system's security settings, is that it's not due until late in the second half of 2004.

The RSA conference is one of the highlights of the security industry's calendar, but Gates has not spoken there before. According to a list of his speeches in recent years, February will be the first time he has spoken at a security conference.

Despite that, with security said to be Microsoft's "top priority" and its current bad security beginning to have a measurable effect on the company's financial performance, Gates has started bringing the topic up more often in public statements.

At the company's Professional Developer's Conference in Los Angeles in October, Gates issued a "mea culpa" for not reacting fast enough to address security in its software, reiterating comments from CEO Steve Ballmer earlier this year.

RSA said yesterday that other speakers include: Cokie Roberts, ABC News chief congressional analyst, RSA CEO Art Coviello, Counterpane CTO and writer Bruce Schneier and VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos.