Server and Tools Business News Bytes blog : Identity and Security

Microsoft announces official name for “Geneva”

grantkd — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:43:00 GMT

Today, at the 2009 Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft announced the official name for Microsoft “Geneva” the upcoming open platform enabling simplified user access and single sign-on for cloud and on-premises applications:

Official name for “Geneva”

· Active Directory Federation Services – formerly known as “Geneva” Server

· Windows Identity Foundation – formerly known as “Geneva” Framework

· Windows Cardspace – same as current version

For more information on this announcement please check out the WPC virtual press room or the Microsoft Forefront & Windows Server team blog. For additional information on Microsoft “Geneva”

please check out the homepage.

Core Infrastructure at WPC 2009

grantkd — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:26:00 GMT

Today begins Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, and there’s a lot of buzz around what partners can look forward to in the coming year.

Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of Infrastructure Server Marketing, will be giving updates on some of the upcoming innovations and partner opportunities coming out of Core Infrastructure onsite as part of his keynotes July 13 and 14.

As part of sharing the news, Bob has also guest-authored a blog entry on the Windows Server team blog that gives more detail on some of the exciting highlights.

To keep on top of other Core Infrastructure news announcements throughout the event, please visit the following blogs:

o Windows Server team blog

o Virtualization team blog

o Forefront

o System Center

o Small Business Server

o Essential Business Server

o Windows Home Server

o MAP Toolkit

You can also follow Core Infrastructure via the STB News Bytes Twitter feed, or learn more at the WPC 2009 virtual pressroom and the Infrastructure PressPass site.

Identity Lifecycle Manager “2” Schedule Update

mdingle — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:46:00 GMT

Microsoft is providing an update on the timing of the ILM “2” release. The solution is now on target for release in the first quarter of 2010 and we will deliver a new Release Candidate (RC1) in the third quarter of this year.

Our current Release Candidate program has been successful with thousands of customer downloads. A variety of customers have told us that innovative features like desktop based self-service capabilities and centralized IT tools will allow them to increase the reach of identity and access management across their enterprises. They plan to use ILM “2” in a wide variety of situations and scenarios.

We have been working closely with a number of early adopter customers, in both public and private sectors, as well as our own internal Microsoft IT (MSIT). As we are getting closer to completing the development of ILM "2" we want to ensure a positive migration, deployment and management experience for all customers. To ensure high quality, usability and customer satisfaction ILM "2" needs to be validated in long-running live deployments before release.

With the new RC1 we will deliver additional deployment and management tools, along with expanded documentation, providing:

· A clear migration path from RC1 to RTM.

· Improved policy management.

· The ability to easily migrate deployments from test to production environments.

· Enabling self-service password reset on Windows XP Service Pack 2 in addition to Service Pack 3.

Microsoft and RSA announce their plans to expand an existing partnership

grantkd — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:36:00 GMT

Today, RSA, the security division of EMC, and Microsoft Corp. announced their plans to expand an existing partnership that will offer companies a better way to protect their sensitive information and share it in a secure manner. The partnership will take advantage of resources and technology from both Microsoft and RSA, offering their joint customers the benefits of both. Microsoft will build RSA’s Data Loss Prevention (DLP) classification technology into Microsoft products and platforms. In addition, RSA will integrate tightly with Microsoft Active Directory Rights Management Services (RMS.)

For more information on today’s news, please click here to view the full press release or here for an audio replay of this morning’s press teleconference. Additionally, both Microsoft & RSA have blogged about the news of the day.

Audio Replay available here.

Expanded Technology Partnership announcement from Microsoft and RSA today at 8 a.m. PST

grantkd — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft Corporation and RSA, the security division of EMC, will announce an expanded technology partnership and a new comprehensive approach to help secure joint customer’s sensitive data with information protection & data loss prevention technology.

If you’re interested in learning more about this news, join us for the 1-hour teleconference with JG Chirapurath, Director of Identity & Security at Microsoft and Tom Corn, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing, Data Security Group of RSA, EMC's security division. There will be time for your questions following the discussion.

If you have any media questions related to the news announcement or experience difficulty accessing the conference line, please contact Emily Ohlsen or Tammy McKnight.

Date: Thursday, December 4^th

Time: 8:00am – 9:00am (PST)

International: 1-773-756-4825

US/Canada: 888-324-7572

Password: Microsoft

TechEd EMEA- Interoperable “Geneva” Platform to Simplify Identity - on Premises and in the Cloud

grantkd — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Today at TechEd EMEA 2008 Developers in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft announced a big step forward in the world of digital identity, unveiling the first public beta of a software platform, code-named “Geneva”, which will help developers create applications across the ‘cloud’, between organizations and on-premises with a single, simplified and open identity model. “Geneva” implements the shared industry vision of an interoperable Identity Metasystem via support for industry standard protocols such as WS-* and SAML and other interoperability capabilities. Additionally, Microsoft announced a collaboration with Orange and eBay on a proof-of-concept customer experience for eBay Powersellers and Orange network users that would use Windows^® Cardspace “Geneva”, the next generation of Microsoft’s identity card selector for users.

“Working with user identities in applications is hard for developers today as they must choose among many different identity technologies and code custom user-access logic into every application, which takes time away from core development work,” said Kim Cameron, chief architect of identity and a Microsoft distinguished engineer. “Geneva” addresses these concerns, simplifying the identity model by externalizing authentication from applications with claims - a set of statements about a user that provide specific information such as title or purchasing authority. The claims-based identity model provides a rich description of users’ characteristics while minimizing disclosure of identity information, improving the ability of applications to make fine-grained access control decisions while enabling users to maintain control over how their identities are used. This model will work in the enterprise, federations, and the consumer Web for both on-premises and cloud applications.”

‘Geneva’ helps businesses and governments facilitate collaboration within the enterprise, across organizational boundaries, and on the Web while satisfying cost cutting and security requirements. ’Geneva’ will also help organizations react to changing needs more quickly and economically by allowing identities on existing systems to interoperate with new systems such as cloud services and service-oriented architecture (SOA). ‘Geneva’ is available for developers today and includes three platform components for enabling claims-based access: ‘Geneva’Framework for .NET developers, ‘Geneva’ Server for IT Pros, and Windows CardSpace ‘Geneva’ for users. These beta releases and additional information can be accessed on the Microsoft Connect site: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=122266.

Microsoft’s single identity model adds Microsoft Services Connector and .NET Access Control Service in the cloud (supporting Azure, the recently announced cloud version of Windows) which are both built on “Geneva” technology and share the same claims architecture to enable a seamless experience that bridges on-premises and cloud environments. Together, these components form a flexible system for developers to harness, making any connected application easier to build, more secure, and less expensive for their customers to own.

Microsoft also announced other “Geneva wave” capabilities for Microsoft’s Live applications and Azure offerings. A new Microsoft Federation Gateway is fully compatible with Geneva and based on the same open standards and protocols, so it can federate with the Microsoft Services Connector, Geneva, or identity solutions from other vendors. Further, all Live IDs will now serve as OpenIDs, adding 400 million accounts to the network of OpenID identities.

Since there are many different and inconsistent user access technologies to choose from (for example Kerberos, X.509, LDAP, SAML), developers today must code their choice into each application with unique logic. This makes it expensive and complex to implement and manage applications with the goal of providing secure user access to heterogeneous systems as each application exists in its own user access technology ‘silo’. “Geneva” helps IT efficiently deploy and manage new applications by reducing custom implementation work, consolidating access management in the hands of IT, helping establish a consistent security model, and facilitating seamless collaboration between organizations with automated federation tools. To maximize administrative efficiency “Geneva” automates federation trust configuration and management using the new harmonized federation metadata format (based on SAML 2.0 metadata) that was recently adopted by the WSFED TC.

‘Geneva’ Server supersedes Active Directory Federation Services to offer customers the flexibility of browser based Web Single Sign-On and Federation using either the WS-Federation passive protocol or the Web SSO Profile of the SAML 2.0 protocol. ‘Geneva’ Server also provides Managed Information Card support for both Windows CardSpace v1 and Windows CardSpace ‘Geneva’.

TechEd EMEA- IT Adds Even More Business Value in Tough Economic Times

grantkd — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Today at TechEd EMEA Microsoft made several announcements to help customers evolve their IT infrastructure for the next generation of Dynamic IT environments:

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 beta. Microsoft's new platform includes cross-platform monitoring for Windows, Unix and Linux servers and improved service level monitoring. For more information on this release please visit http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/

Microsoft Security Intelligence Report volume 5. The report uses data from hundreds of millions of computer worldwide to offer an in-depth, global view of security and privacy threats for the first half of 2008. The full report is available for download at www.microsoft.com/sir

TechNet Online Social Bookmarking. Social bookmarking enables IT professionals to save their web favorites online, see what other technical professionals are bookmarking, subscribe to new "social feeds," and network with other members of the Microsoft technical community. More information can be found online at: http://www.technetbookmarks.com/.

"Dublin." The codename for the enhanced Windows Server application, which will offer greater scalability, easier management and close integration with Internet Information Services (IIS) to provide a standard host for applications that use Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) or Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

Microsoft Application Virtualization Support for x64: Today Microsoft announced that Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (App-V) will support 64-bit applications and platforms in H1 2010.64-bit support will be included for both App-V client and server infrastructure components and fully compatible with Microsoft's 64-bit operating systems.For more information, please visit http://blogs.technet.com/mdop/

Windows Server 2008 R2. New features of Windows Server 2008 R2 include: Live Migration, Branch Cache, DirectAccess and Remote Desktop Services (RDS), the new name for Terminal Services, reflects an expanded role allowing both session and virtual machine-based centralized computing.

Today, the Microsoft Solution Accelerators Team announced the RTM release of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 3.2 that includes new features such as Microsoft Online Services Needs Assessment and Survey. MAP is a scalable and agent-less assessment platform designed to make it easier to adopt the latest Microsoft technologies. In this version, MAP has expanded its assessment capabilities to include SQL Server 2008, Forefront/NAP, and Microsoft Online Services migration, as well as providing a Power Savings assessment to help customer “go green." For more information, please visit the MAP team blog.

Integrated Identity and Security Solutions. Enterprise customers continually say that they need integrated identity management, access and security solutions - not separate point products. In response, Microsoft is investing heavily in the development and delivery of these integrated solutions to help customers better protect their organizations, increase productivity and reduce costs. In June 2008 Microsoft combined the identity and security engineering and business teams to accelerate this strategy.

Microsoft's approach in this area is unique and based on a wide range of connected products and technologies: The secure Windows platform with built-in identity infrastructure and policy-based access, as well as security, identity and systems management solutions like Forefront, Identity Lifecycle Manager and System Center.

Today at TechEd IT Pro in Europe, Microsoft announced two product milestones in support of this strategy.

o The Release Candidate of Identity Lifecycle Manager "2" is available now at www.microsoft.com/ilm2. Due for release in the first half of 2009, ILM "2" provides self-service for employees, enhanced administration and automation for IT professionals, and extensibility for developers.

o Available soon, Intelligent Application Gateway Service Pack 2 takes advantage of virtualization technology to give mobile workers easy and secure access to applications from a broad range of devices and locations.

o Additional information about these products can be found on the Forefront Team blog at http://blogs.technet.com/forefront and a video about ILM "2,"on TechNet Edge can be found here: http://edge.technet.com/Media/ILM-v2-policies-demo-and-interview/

.For more on these announcements and to view the full press release, please visit the TechEd Global Pressroom.

In this video, Brad Anderson, General Manager, Microsoft Management and Services Division, gives an overview of the announcements made in his keynote today.

WPC news from Identity & Security

grantkd — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:40:00 GMT

Today at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2008, the Server Tools and Business group is unveiling increased investments in security and identity partner channels.

To support channel partners of Microsoft’s recently merged Identity & Security Division, the company is making a $75 million investment in marketing, training, support for and expansion of its Security Software Advisory (SSA) program to include identity products. The SSA program has grown 500%, from 4,000 partners a year ago to over 23,000 today. Microsoft is also offering a new rewards program for resellers and a new “SSA Jumpstart” program that gives new partners an extra 50 percent bonus on top of their first SSA claim.

More information about Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference event, including the full text of the press release, can be found at the Virtual Press Room site (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/wwpc/default.mspx).