More Secure Collaboration in 5 Steps

  • Article

Reposting
from an earlier entry (May 5) on the Forefront Expert Blogs.

To learn
more about Secure Collaboration for your organization, please join us for the virtual launch
event of SharePoint2010 and Office 2010 tomorrow, May 12, at 8 am
Pacific, 11 am Eastern. We have a special on-demand session on "Secure
Collaboration" featuring customers currently experiencing the benefits of this
new offering. We also encourage you to return to the launch event experience and participate
in a Secure Collaboration Live Chat featuring Microsoft product managers on May
17 at 1:30 pm Pacific, 4:30 pm Eastern.

Today we released Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint and Active Directory Federation Services 2.0, which
makes it a good time to talk about secure business collaboration.

It is clear that collaboration drives the modern enterprise. 
Sharing documents and applications within the company, from the remote office,
with trusted partners and customers, into the cloud, etc. - is crucial for most
organizations today.

Collaboration is a key engine for success, regardless of
which industry or part of the world you're in.  And, whether its deployed
on-premises or as hosted cloud service, the new SharePoint 2010 is the ideal business
collaboration platform to connect people within the enterprise and beyond. 

Of course, helping ensure valuable information is safe
against accidental loss, theft and malicious software is no trivial exercise in
the world of cloud computing and cross-company collaboration.  Information
is the lifeblood of any organization and it must be kept highly secure.  In
his blog Gartner vice president Neil MacDonald wrote
about this "tearing down of walls between businesses and the opening up of
our information, processes and systems to outside parties - whether these are
contractors, outsourcers, partners and customers. Nearly every enterprise I
speak with is being asked to enable and foster secure collaboration with
external entities."

Working with customers and
partners, Microsoft has learned a great deal about secure collaboration. 
Based on this, we thought we would share our top five recommendations to help
companies strike the right balance of risk management and productive
collaboration. 

  • Be a Team Player: Build a virtual team
    across security, content, identity and business managers for a holistic
    approach.
  • Strive for Defense-in-Depth: Apply
    strong anti-malware on SharePoint, in addition to anti-malware on PCs and
    servers.
  • Extend the Power of Identity: Identity
    is at the center of good security. Apply interoperable technologies to
    manage and federate identities across company boundaries and into the
    cloud (e.g. Single Sign-On.
  • Go the Extra Mile to Protect Your
    Information Lifeblood: Use rights management policies and technology to
    keep sensitive content out of the wrong hands.
  • Be Cloud-Ready: Investigate your cloud
    vendor's security measures. Choose technologies that bridge in-house and
    cloud systems.

The new Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint and Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 (ADFS 2.0)
provide essential building blocks for a Secure Collaboration solution.  They also
represent great progress for what we call our Business Ready Security strategy to help
enterprise customers manage risk and
enable productivity. 

Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint is
deeply integrated with SharePoint Server 2010, preventing employees from
uploading or downloading infected docs, inappropriate content, or sensitive
information. 

Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 is
a no-cost download for Windows Server.  It enables easier, more secure
access to applications on-premises and in the cloud, as well as collaboration
within the enterprise and across organizational boundaries.  ADFS 2.0 lets
companies apply their existing on-premises identities to the cloud. 

  • For
    more product information, please see here.
  • To view the on-demand
    Secure Collaboration session    , go to www.the2010event.com
  • Join us for a Secure
    Collaboration Live Chat     featuring Microsoft product managers on May 17
    at 1:30 pm Pacific, 4:30 pm Eastern