• Consumerization of IT

    In the meantime I guess that most of us agreed that Consumerization of IT or Bring Your Own Device or how ever you want to call this will become a reality – probably rather sooner than later.

    In the meantime our team in France published a few papers/guides, which are definitely worth looking at:

    I already mentioned the Test Lab guides Consumerization of IT–How to address this

    Now they added a Windows To Go guide: Consumerization of IT Test Lab Guide: Windows To Go with DirectAccess

    This document contains instructions for setting up the Windows To Go feature with DirectAccess test lab by:

    • Deploying three server computers running Windows Server 2012 as Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs), one physical client computer running Windows 8 Enterprise and one Windows To Go Workspace.
    • Setting up the virtual networks, the Active Directory infrastructure, and the DirectAccess server.
    The resulting configuration simulates a private intranet and the Internet.

    And they added a paper on how to protect the information: Information Protection and Control (IPC) in Microsoft Exchange Online with AD RMS

    Due to increased regulation, the consumerization of IT (CoIT) and the “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD), enterprises of all sizes are facing growing needs to protect sensitive information.  At the same time, enterprises have a need to share that same information amongst appropriate employees within and outside the corporate network.

    Microsoft Active Directory Right Management Services (AD RMS) provides the capability on-premise to create and consume protected content such as e-mail and documents. As of today, such a capability is also leveraged by the Microsoft Exchange Online services through the Information Protection and Control (IPC) features to apply persistent protection to e-mail messages and attachments. 

    Built on existing Microsoft documentation and knowledge base articles, this paper presents how to leverage the corporate on-premise AD RMS infrastructure in the organization’s Office 365 tenant, and more especially with Microsoft Exchange Online.

    This document is intended for system architects and IT professionals who are interested in understanding the basics of cross-premise support for AD RMS on-premise and Exchange Online along with planning and deploying such a deployment model in their environment. It also provides basic instructions for setting up and configuring an AD RMS single-node cluster in a test lab environment for the cross-premise deployment with Exchange Online.

    This paper is part of a series of documents on the identity and security features of Office 365, and more especially is the second guide of the series.  It indeed completes a first whitepaper entitled Microsoft Office 365 Single Sign-On (SSO) with AD FS 2.0 also available on the Microsoft Download Center. This first whitepaper of the series is intended to provide a better understanding of the different single sign-on deployment options for the services in Office 365, how to enable single sign-on using corporate Active Directory credentials and AD FS 2.0 to the services in Office 365, and the different configuration elements to be aware of for such deployment.

    Good and important information!

    Roger

  • Tackling Cybersecurity Together

    Yesterday we all had a very long day: We hosted the EU Cybersecurity and Digital Crimes Forum in Brussels. At lot of government elites from all across Europe attended and were part of very intense discussions. It was obvious that people really are serious about cyber-whatever and that actions are being taken. I think that there was a certain consensus at least within the people I talked to that we all need to move faster. What we saw as well is, that people start to think about using Cybersecurity as a driver for economic growth.

    Our President, Microsoft International, Jean-Philippe Courtois opened the event and just published his thoughts: Tackling cybersecurity together

    Roger

  • Banking Trojan hits banks globally

    When I was talking to governments about Flame a few weeks ago, they typically told me that they do not see a lot but that they are heavily concerned about SpyEye and other banking trojans. It is now reflected in this article:

    New bank theft software hits three continents

    Roger