[Written by Thomas Raschke and Bill Nagel]
On December 4, 2008, RSA and Microsoft jointly announced the imminent release of a collaboration that integrates RSA's Data Loss Prevention (DLP) product into Microsoft’s enterprise offerings. Initially, this means an integration between RSA's DLP 6.5 and Microsoft’s Active Directory Rights Management Server (AD RMS). The DLP product identifies and classifies sensitive information and RMS automates policy enforcement based on a company's existing AD structure. The integration is admittedly relatively basic to start, but in the long term the two companies expect DLP to be tightly woven into the fabric of Microsoft's enterprise products — identity-enabled data protection sitting deep within a company's Microsoft infrastructure.
What it means: All things considered, this is good news for every CISO. Microsoft has the broadest technology base by far; teaming up with a true security front-runner like RSA mitigates the fact that Microsoft has also had arguably the largest selection of security challenges in the past. The partnership addresses today's prime security challenge: By and large, firms tell us that the need to protect sensitive information leaking to people and places inside and outside the corporate perimeter is the single biggest obstacle they face.
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