Microsoft Licence RSA Technology

Microsoft have announced that they have licensed RSA’s Data Loss Prevention (DLP) technology and will include it in future versions of Exchange server, Sharepoint server & “similar” products. There’s no word whether it will feature within Office but it would seem likely as Sharepoint is part of the Office family and Office also includes Exchange’s desktop client, Outlook. Also, as the point of origin for the vast majority of documents (spreadsheets, Word documents, .ppts etc), extra security in Microsoft Office seems a logical idea.

This will integrate with Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) so the RSA software will identify in file servers, databases, datacenters, Sharepoint repositories etc and then AD RMS will enforce the policies. These policies can be used to prevent certain people performing certain tasks with certain documents so for instance the HR Dept. can view and print wage spreadsheets, but only the Finance Dept. can edit them.