How One International Software Company Secures Its Network with Windows Server 2008

The company, as you may have guessed, is called Microsoft. And there are some new materials you can download to see how Microsoft used Windows Server 2008 and a number of security-related technologies to secure its network as part of its Secure Anywhere Access Initiative.

The information is available as a whitepaper, a Webcast, or a PowerPoint.

I went with the whitepaper, which is divided into the following sections:

• Business Benefits
• An overview of the Microsoft security environment
• Planning
• Deployment
• Lessons learned and best practices

From the Executive Summary:

The technologies involved feature improvements made with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista. Techniques using IPsec detailed in this paper can also be implemented with Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP, and you can gain additional benefits with the inclusion of Windows Firewall in Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Windows Server 2003 SP1. However, the improvements made with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista are compelling and present opportunities for significant additions to the security environment.