News

Microsoft Describes Its Own Security Measures

Microsoft published a white paper on its Web site last week giving an overview of its internal security measures.

While Microsoft's security is not perfect, and there have been highly publicized compromises of the company's network and Web sites, there are few IT organizations in charge of securing major enterprises that have more familiarity with the products they deploy than the Microsoft Operations and Technology Group.

In addition to supporting the IT operations of Microsoft, a Fortune 500 company, OTG also is tasked with being one of the earliest and most thorough testers of Microsoft technologies.

The 29-page technical whitepaper, "Security at Microsoft," is a description of the framework Microsoft OTG put in place and that helps defend the high-profile company against approximately 100,000 intrusion attempts per month.

The document is not a procedural guide like the very specific instruction sets Microsoft provides for secure configuration of Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2000 Server. Instead, the document lays out the design principles the company built its security model around and discusses a few specifics for reaching them.

Most of the infrastructural descriptions in "Security at Microsoft" involve the use of Windows Server 2003. But the company contends that the underlying principles were set in the Windows 2000 timeframe and were originally implemented on that older platform.

The white paper is available at:
www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/MSIT/Security/mssecbp.asp

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

Featured

  • Microsoft Appoints Althoff as New CEO for Commercial Business

    Microsoft CEO and chairman Satya Nadella on Wednesday announced the promotion of Judson Althoff to CEO of the company's commercial business, presenting the move as a response to the dramatic industrywide shifts caused by AI.

  • Broadcom Revamps VMware Partner Program Again

    Broadcom recently announced a significant update regarding its VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program, coinciding with the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, a key component in Broadcom’s private cloud strategy.

  • Closeup of the new Copilot keyboard key

    Microsoft Updates Copilot To Add Context-Sensitive Agents to Teams, SharePoint

    Microsoft has rolled out a new public preview for collaborative "always on" agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing enhanced, context-aware tools into Teams channels, meetings, SharePoint sites, Planner workstreams and Viva Engage communities.

  • Windows 365 Cloud Apps Now Available for Public Preview

    Microsoft announced this week that Windows 365 Cloud Apps are now available for public preview. This aims to allow IT administrators to stream individual Windows applications from the cloud, removing the need to assign Cloud PCs to every user.