The European Union will "ensure that competitors have the capacity to offer the range of services they want to provide, including security," Philip Lowe said. Lowe starts work as the EU's Director General for Competition on September 1.

"We have always emphasized that there should be an emphasis on interoperability," Lowe said.

European officials have their own antitrust investigation pending against Microsoft, which is separate from the U.S. case.

The European case has focused more on whether Microsoft has illegally changed commonly used industry standards in order to shut out competitors.

Microsoft's new security product, called Palladium, would use Microsoft's Windows operating system and custom computer chips to encrypt data, like documents or music files, so that only the intended recipient could use them.

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