The future of security baseline management has arrived. The new Security Compliance Manager will enable you to plan, deploy, operate, and manage your organization’s security baselines for Windows® client and server operating systems, and Microsoft applications.

Earlier this year the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team announced the beta release of this free new tool. They gathered feedback from IT pros and organizations around the globe, and they’re excited to share the result: a tool designed to help your organization efficiently manage the security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies.

The Security Compliance Manager will help you accelerate knowledge to merge best practices, customize once to centralize decision making, and export to multiple formats to enable monitoring, verification, and compliance. The tool will ultimately help to accelerate your organization’s ability to efficiently manage the security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies.

This end-to-end Solution Accelerator will help you plan, deploy, operate, and manage your security baselines for Windows® client and server operating systems, and Microsoft applications. Access the complete database of Microsoft recommended security settings, customize your baselines, and then choose from multiple formats—including Desired Configuration Management (DCM) packs, Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP), XLS, or Group Policy objects (GPOs)—to export the baselines to your environment to automate the security baseline compliance verification process.

Windows 7 security just got easier.

Next steps

• Download the Security Compliance Manager.
• Learn more about Security Compliance Manager.
• Help spread the word: Tell your friends about Security Compliance Manager.
• Thoughts? Favorite features? Feedback? Tell it to the dev team.

Want the facts straight from the development team? Check out this series of short videos! Better yet, post your own video response sharing your favorite feature.

Via the SharePoint Team blog:

Upgrade your skills to SharePoint 2010 through a series of self-paced modules of SharePoint 2010 technical training –including demos, presentations and hosted hands-on-labs now available through the Partner Learning Center! With two different tracks, both IT professionals and developers can take advantage of SharePoint 2010 Ignite to get ready to deploy and support implementations of, or build custom applications on SharePoint 2010.

If you’ve already attended a SharePoint Ignite training, you can use Ignite Online to revisit topics, work with online labs and take assessments to test your knowledge. Use the links below to pick a track of your choice. Or browse through both and choose topics that interest you!

SharePoint 2010 Ignite Online for IT Professionals: For IT professionals, SharePoint 2010 offers enhancements to drive productivity, a scalable unified infrastructure, and flexible deployment. Use the Ignite Online IT Pro training to get ready to implement SharePoint 2010 projects. Choose from topics including Architectural changes, Service Applications, Business Continuity Management, Upgrade, Security, Search and ECM etc.

SharePoint 2010 Ignite Online for Developers: For developers, SharePoint 2010 provides the business collaboration platform to rapidly build solutions and respond to business needs. Use the Ignite Online Developer training to learn how to build custom applications with SharePoint 2010. Choose from topics including Development with VS 2010, UI advancements, Sandboxed solutions, Application Lifecycle Management etc.

The Microsoft Virtual Labs enable customers and partners to try the newest products from their own desktops at the time that suits them best using nothing but a web browser. 

• Technical Introduction to System Center Essentials 2010
• Technical Introduction to System Center Data Protection Manager 2010

Live webcast on 11 May 2010 at 18:30 CET. More info and registration.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 introduces numerous advances in performance, scalability, and reliability, while lowering the total cost of ownership. In this webcast, you'll get information on the Exchange Server 2010 deployment within Microsoft IT. The session includes descriptions of the Exchange Server 2010 roles, design criteria, hardware choices, and operational changes.

Presenter: Luisa Garcia Zapata, Microsoft IT Service Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Luisa joined Microsoft a few years ago and is currently a service manager in the Business Online Services Group. This group is responsible for running Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 internally and also for multiple enterprise customers. Luisa is responsible for the end-to-end e-mail experience for all Microsoft employees worldwide. This includes overseeing e-mail availability and multiple aspects of the service, such as support, total cost of ownership (TCO), feature deployments, and end-user education. A recent project was the full migration of Exchange Server 2007 to Exchange Server 2010. In this effort, "dogfooding" played a critical role in shipping a high-quality product to Microsoft customers.

Want to know more about how Microsoft does IT? Visit the Microsoft IT Showcase website and find best practices and experiences from Microsoft IT that give a unique, inside view into how Microsoft plans for, deploys, and manages its own enterprise solutions.