BillCan's Place : Security

Released: The External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint!

BillCan — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:32:00 GMT

I'm happy to announce that the External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint has been released and is now available at http://www.microsoft.com/collabkit. This toolkit helps you easily deploy a SharePoint-based external collaboration facility at your organization. Once this facility is in place, end users can quickly create a new collaboration site (using a SharePoint site collection) and add internal and external users to that site. Both these process can be workflow enabled so that an administrator must approve both site and user creation.

The toolkit runs on both MOSS 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. It also leverages SQL Server 2005 and ADAM. All external users are created in the ADAM directory so they are segregated from your primary user store.

Please take a look at the External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Bill

Windows Server 2008 Security Guide Released!

BillCan — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:27:00 GMT

My buddies down the hall recently released the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide the other day. This security guide is targeted at the latest Windows Server release (obviously!) and helps you implement the appropriate security settings based on the server's role.

You can access the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide at http://www.microsoft.com/wssg.

Help us develop a new Solution Accelerator focused on Secure Collaboration

BillCan — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 00:27:00 GMT

Employees need to share documents with individuals from other companies, such as partners and suppliers. These documents often contain sensitive information that needs to be kept safe and secure. Microsoft SharePoint products deliver the document collaboration capabilities, but many IT departments have been reluctant to use a SharePoint infrastructure with external parties because of concerns about security and user management.

Project Inverness is an effort to address these concerns. This project will provide authoritative guidance and tools to help your organization set up SharePoint to provide users with the flexibility they need to collaborate easily with external people while simultaneously allowing the security manager to rest assured that confidential data is protected. This Solution Accelerator will be freely downloadable from TechNet.

To help us develop a Solution Accelerator that really helps address our customer's pains, we need customers like you who can review our designs, preview early versions of the guidance and tools, and provide valuable feedback. The benefit to Microsoft is obvious: with your help, we can provide a Solution Accelerator that better meets the needs of our customers. You can also benefit from participating in our development process. You will help ensure the final deliverables meet your specific needs, get early access to the solution accelerator so you can begin planning your implementation, gain access to Microsoft experts, and be acknowledged for your contribution in the final deliverables. In addition, we will provide a nice thank you gift to those users who make a particularly significant contribution to the project.

If you are interested in helping out, please visit https://connect.microsoft.com/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=1657&InvitationID=PRM1-C3FJ-W3FP&SiteID=14 and follow the instructions to enroll in the program.

Thank you,
Bill Canning
Sr. Program Manager
Solution Accelators - Security and Compliance

Successful side meeting today

BillCan — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:09:00 GMT

Today I conducted what I would characterize as a very successful side meeting at the Peobody hotel. The side meeting was focused on secure collaboration, and ran about 2 hours. We got about 60% of the RSVPs that attended which seems to be about par for the course.

Generally speaking, the things we were thinking about are also on our customer's radar screen. We did gather some interesting new information that was a bit different than what we suspected. For instance, some of the interesting findings were that the customers seemed much more worried about strong authentication than I expected them to be (now that I think of it this isn't actually that surprising). In addition, they also seemed more open to CardSpace than I expected.

Announcing the Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs

BillCan — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:05:00 GMT

I am happy to announce that the we have released the Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs. This solution accelerator is designed to help you understand the encryption options that Microsoft provides that can help protect laptop data (BitLocker and Encrypting File System), and then deploy and operate the selected technologies. The DET includes a tool called the EFS Assistant, a small program that installs on your client PCs (desktop or laptop) and enforces your EFS encryption policy.

You can see the Data Encryption Toolkit online or access the download page at www.microsoft.com/det.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Collaborating Outside the Firewall (Tech Ed Side Meeting)

BillCan — Thu, 31 May 2007 04:40:00 GMT

I'm now envisioning my next project for the Solution Accelerators for Security and Compliance team. As a bit of background, my team provides prescriptive, tested guidance to help customers solve tricky security problems quickly. My new project is going to focus on collaborating securely outside the firewall. While this topic could be pretty broad, I'm thinking that Sharepoint will be involved, but that's not cast in concrete.

Anyway, that's where you come in: I am hosting a side meeting at Tech Ed next Wednesday to discuss this topic. If you are going to be there and would like to provide input on what problems you are facing related to secure collaboration, I'd love to invite you to meeting. Attending will give you an opportunity to have your specific requirements heard right from the beginning, and will allow you to help shape the solution accelerator that we deliver. Oh, and we will be providing munchies and maybe a bit of schwag as a thank you!

If you are interested, please use the email link above to get in touch with me: I will let you know the particulars. For those of you not going to Tech Ed, get in touch too. While I can't guarantee munchies, I would love to be able to bounce ideas off as many customers as possible!

Secure Collaboration: What's it mean to you?

BillCan — Sat, 19 May 2007 07:56:00 GMT

I'm wrapping up my current project in the next couple of weeks and starting to think about my next project. This next project will focus on "Secure Collaboration". I've got some ideas about what we could do in this area, but the most important thing is to help solve our customers' problem. Therefore, I'd like to know: when you think about secure collaboration, what do you think about?

I'd really appreciate any feedback on this topic. What guidance and tools would really help your organization collaborate securely, especially with people outside the firewall (customers, suppliers, partners, employees, etc.)?

By the way, I am going to be hosting a side meeting at Tech Ed to get input from customers on this topic. Let me know if you are interested and you're going to be at Tech Ed and I'll make sure you get an invite.

Thanks!

EFS Assistant Updated: RC2 now available on CodePlex

BillCan — Sat, 12 May 2007 09:38:00 GMT

We have made a few bug fixes to the EFS Assistant tool and its Administrator's Guide. We have posted new versions to our CodePlex site at http://www.codeplex.com/EFSAssistant. Please let me know if you find any bugs or you get any error messages when you run the tool.

EFS Assistant RC1 is now available!

BillCan — Sat, 05 May 2007 06:57:00 GMT

The Solution Accelerators for Security and Compliance team has released its first release candidate for the Microsoft Encrypting File System Assistant 1.0 (EFS Assistant). This tool helps centrally control EFS encryption on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista clients. You can download the Release Candidate 1 version of the tool and the Administrator's Guide here.

Looking for a few good devs...

BillCan — Sat, 05 May 2007 01:20:00 GMT

Are you an IT administrator who wants to do some development on the side? Are you a developer who is interested in IT administration? We're looking for you!

My team has created a tool called the EFS Assistant and are putting the source code out on CodePlex (see http://www.codeplex.com/EFSAssistant). We think we have made a great start on this tool, but we know lots of additional features that could be added. To help keep the tool moving forward, we are looking for someone (or some people) who would be interested in taking the project forward.

If you are interested in participating in the project, let me know by using the email link to send me an quick note. I look forward to hearing from you!

Bill

New pre-release version of the EFS Assistant tool available on Codeplex

BillCan — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 08:19:00 GMT

We have migrated development of the EFS Assistant tool to Microsoft's Codeplex site. To celebrate, we have posted a pre-release version of the EFS Assistant on the site. This version incorporates feedback we got from customers and internal reviewers.

The EFS Assistant page on Codeplex is here: http://www.codeplex.com/EFSAssistant.

Protecting your mobile PCs using BitLocker and EFS - New Guidance Released!

BillCan — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:52:00 GMT

My team recently released a new guide on Technet focused on protecting data on mobile PCs. The Security Analysis is part of the Microsoft Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs that is being released in phases over the next couple of months. The Security Analysis can be found at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=86125. The Data Encryption Toolkit is at http://www.microsoft.com/det.

The Security Analysis looks at the unique risks that impact the data on mobile PCs and analyzes how Microsoft's key encryption technologies in Windows XP and WIndows Vista help address these risks. We've found that, depending on the level of data protection you need, Microsoft can meet the needs of most organizations using built-in technologies, especially when using Windows Vista.

If you are trying to figure out how to protect the confidential data on your mobile PCs, if you have questions about how EFS or BitLocker works, or if you are wondering about the different options for configuring these tools, you should check out the links above. While you are there, join our beta program and get an early glimpse at some of the other Data Encryption Toolkit components under development.

Beta Available for the Data Encryption Toolkit including the EFS Assistant

BillCan — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 02:23:00 GMT

The Solution Accelerators for Security and Compliance (SA-SC) team is currently developing the Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs (DET). The Toolkit is a collection of guidance and tools designed to help you address specific data security risks that are related to laptop computers. By implementing the guidance and tools provided in the Toolkit, you can help your organization more effectively protect the data on laptop computers from the threat of loss or theft.

The Toolkit uses two encryption technologies that are a part of the Windows operating system: Encrypting File System (EFS), which is included in Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional, and many versions of Windows Vista, and BitLocker Drive Encryption, a new capability built into the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista.

This Beta release of the Toolkit contains 2 major components:

The Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs Planning and Implementation Guide. This document provides prescriptive, tested guidance for deploying various Microsoft data encryption technologies on your mobile PCs. The guidance is focused on how to deploy EFS and BitLocker in a way that is supportable in a large environment.
The Microsoft Encrypting File System Assistant. The EFS Assistant is a tool you can deploy on your organization's mobile PCs that enforces your EFS encryption policies. The EFS Assistant addresses many of the manageability issues inherent in EFS, and is entirely controlled and configured using Group Policy. This component includes Administrative Templates for configuring the tool as well as an Administrator's Guide that describes how to deploy, configure, and run the tool.

If you are interested in participating in this beta program, please visit https://connect.microsoft.com/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=790&InvitationID=DETB-Q3PQ-JVYK&SiteID=14.

Beta version of tool for enforcing EFS encryption is shipping next week

BillCan — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 19:06:00 GMT

One of the major downsides to EFS, especially from an administrator's point of view, is that it is difficult to manage centrally. My team is creating a tool that will help address that situation. We call this tool the EFS Assistant. Basically, the EFS Assistant is a small software application that is installed on a user's laptop (or desktop) that enforces the encryption policy the administrator pushed to the client via Group Policy. The beta version of the tool can do the following:

Encrypt specific default folders that Microsoft recommends (e.g., My Documents, etc.)
Encrypt additional folders as configured by the administrator (for example, a folder holding data for a custom-built application)
Do not encrypt default folders that Microsoft recommends leaving unencrypted (e.g., Program Files, Windows directory)
Do not encrypt folders as configured by the administrator (for example, the application files for a custom-built application)
Scan the disk and encrypt folders that mostly or exclusively contain data files
Record the results of its encryption run in WMI for reporting via SMS or other management tools

The tool has some additional capabilities that you will see if you download the beta when it becomes available next week. If you are interested in this tool and would liketo participate in the beta program, please join our program on Microsoft Connect by visiting the following URL: https://connect.microsoft.com/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=790&InvitationID=DESA-QYGY-T4HB&SiteID=14. When the beta becomes available, you will get an email notification.

The EFS Assistant a component of the Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs. The Toolkit is a set of guidance and tools to help address the unique risks to data presented by laptops using Microsoft technologies.

Stay up to date with the Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs

BillCan — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 07:13:00 GMT

If you want to stay up to date with my Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs project, visit https://connect.microsoft.com/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=790&InvitationID=DESA-QYGY-T4HB&SiteID=14. If you sign up here you will be notified of any significant updates.