Opening soon: Beta review program for new Security Compliance Manager!

I'm super busy preparing the Beta release for Security Compliance Manager (SCM)! I've gotten a lot of mail recently about what exactly is this SCM thing? What does it do? Well, I've shot some cool video discussing the features and benefits. Keep it locked here, I should be posting it within a week!

 

Here's the quick summary of the tool and the links to join the beta:

Centralized Management and Data Repository: The centralized management console of the Security Compliance Manager provides you with a unified, end-to-end user experience to plan, customize, report, and export security baselines. The tool gives you full access to the complete database of recommended security settings for Windows client and server operating systems, and Microsoft applications.

Security Baseline Customization: Customizing, merging, and reviewing your baselines just got easier. Now you can use the new customization capabilities of the Security Compliance Manager to duplicate any of the recommended baselines from Microsoft-for Windows client and server operating systems, and Microsoft applications-and quickly modify security settings to meet the standards of your organization's environment.

Security Baseline Comparison and Export: Security Compliance Manager enables you to quickly adopt the latest Microsoft product releases. Side-by-side baseline comparison features allow you to identify any changes to setting configurations and merge baselines within a product family with ease. Export and deploy baselines in your format of choice, including Desired Configuration Management (DCM) packs, Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP), XLS, or Group Policy objects (GPOs).

Security Baseline Compliance Monitoring and Verification: Keep current with the latest releases from Microsoft; automate your security baseline compliance process, and take advantage of baseline version control and automatic update features. The planning, customization, and export features of Security Compliance Manager quickly enable you to leverage monitoring and verification technologies, automate policy deployment, and produce compliance reports.

 Join the Beta Review Program!

Opening soon: Beta review program for new Security Compliance Manager! This new tool provides centralized management, a security settings database, customization capabilities, and export flexibility for security baselines, accelerating an organization's ability to efficiently manage the security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies. Join the Security Compliance Manager Beta, and help the security team build this offering to best meet your needs. The beta will launch early February 2010; participants will be notified via e-mail when the materials are available. Existing members, bookmark this link.

Jeff dot Sigman @ microsoft dot com

Programmer Dude

Microsoft Solution Accelerators – Security and Compliance Team