How to Secure Microsoft SharePoint (
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Microsoft
SharePoint. These are two words that conjure up both relief and fear.
First, the relief: with over 85 million licenses sold and $1 billion in
sales, it's clear that organizations are rapidly embracing Microsoft
SharePoint as an affordable technology that can solve the
not-so-insignificant challenges of secure collaboration.
Second, the fear: Microsoft SharePoint servers are being deployed so
rapidly that IT can't keep up with the security, compliance and risk
considerations.
Consider this: A sales department hit with budget cuts and resource
reductions turns to the IT department to help it streamline the
document-sharing process with partners and customers. IT deploys a
sales sub site on a Microsoft SharePoint server that's also home to
human resources, marketing and other corporate sub sites. The sales
department then creates partner and customer folders on its site.
Business and revenue objectives demand that document sharing begin
immediately, so IT grants partners and customers immediate access to
the sales site. In fact, access is opened so fast that IT doesn’t have
time to implement a policy restricting partners from accessing other
sub sites and documents hosted on the server. In this case (an
all-too-common occurrence today), channel and customer objectives are
being met while security and compliance policies are exposed.
There is certainly a level of trust between the organization, its
partners and customers. But the fact that outside entities now have
access to different department sub sites and file shares clearly
presents a security and compliance issue. With cutbacks and the drive
to keep channel and customer revenue flowing, how can IT possibly hope
to keep up with security and compliance?
Fortunately, for organizations turning to collaboration tools such
as Microsoft SharePoint, there are many cost-effective security and
compliance solutions that respond to the demands of rapid and secure
collaboration. Unfortunately, these products and their marketing
messages are hitting the street at such a furious pace that it's hard
to keep up with what's real and what's hype.
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