4-page Case Study - Posted 3/8/2007

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SAS

SAS Gains Extranet Benefits with Confidence – Security Solution Makes it Easy

SAS, a global technology leader, wanted to extend its internal collaboration environment, based on Microsoft® SharePoint® products and technologies, to include an extranet. It also wanted to minimize the potential of a virus attack vector being exposed within the extranet. To accomplish this, the company is extending the effectiveness of defense-in-depth to its extranet thanks to Microsoft® Forefront™ Security for SharePoint. SAS protects its extranet with up to five simultaneous engines and maintains that protection without needing additional staff.

Situation

We see Forefront Security for SharePoint meeting all of our needs. It gives us an extra layer of protection for our SharePoint environment in ways that no other product can match.  Tom Booth Senior Collaboration Engineer SAS

Since 2003 SAS has used Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server—and, now Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007—for collaboration, team sites, document management, discussion boards, and project management. The software is used by sales and marketing, human resources, healthcare, research and development, and other operations throughout the company, and is a mission-critical resource for many of the company’s 10,000 employees. Today, the company’s SharePoint Server installation includes 20 servers.

“SharePoint Server is absolutely mission-critical to us at SAS,” says Bonnie Springer, Senior Collaboration Engineer at SAS. “We started with modest use of SharePoint three years ago and its use has exploded. It affects every division. Ease of use is a big factor—you don’t need to know HTML and it operates completely within a Web browser. Beyond just hosting documents, we use it with Web Parts to expose any SAS data in real time.”

Given the mission-critical nature of SharePoint Server to SAS, the company needs to do everything possible to help ensure the security of its installation. It protected its servers at the file level with antivirus software, but it had no protection that was SharePoint-aware and that could operate at the application level. Client-side protection—that is, at the desktop, as users checked documents in and out—was crucial.

But as the company contemplated extending its collaboration environment to include a partner extranet based on Windows® SharePoint Services 2007, that protection was no longer enough. After all, how could it ensure that every document uploaded by a partner was properly scanned for viruses? SAS needed a better way to protect this mission-critical application.

Solution

As SAS upgrades to SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 2007, it’s also adding a potent new weapon to its security arsenal: Microsoft Forefront™ Security for SharePoint, which helps protect collaboration environments based on SharePoint products and technologies against the latest viruses and worms.

Forefront Security for SharePoint is also one of a range of Microsoft Forefront products that help protect ever-larger aspects of a company’s Microsoft-based infrastructure.

SharePoint Server is absolutely mission-critical to us at SAS.  Bonnie Springer Senior Collaboration Engineer SAS

SAS is deploying Forefront Security for SharePoint on up to 10 front-end servers running on 64-bit Dell 2650 hardware in its data center. Forefront will be installed on every Web front end server in the server farm running SharePoint products and technologies, covering users throughout the United States and EMEA.
 
The company is running Forefront Security for SharePoint with as many as five antivirus scan engines to simultaneously check files as they enter and leave the SharePoint Server site. It is also using the solution’s file-type filtering to help block potentially dangerous file extension types such as level one executable files. The software’s ability to block true file types helps protect SAS even if someone attempts to upload a virus disguised as a standard file.

Benefits

“Based on our evaluation, we see Forefront Security for SharePoint meeting all of our needs,” says Tom Booth, Senior Collaboration Engineer, SAS. “It gives us an extra layer of protection for our SharePoint environment in ways that no other product can match. It is key to our deployment of the SharePoint-based extranet.”

The company’s experience with Forefront Security for SharePoint shows the software to be efficient as well as effective. Springer and her colleagues say that deployment is simple and straightforward. They also praise the centralized console, which provides a highly visual way to manage the Forefront Security for SharePoint environment.  Booth, in turn, says he appreciates the “set it and forget it” reports that keep the team updated on security status

“Forefront Security for SharePoint has a quick learning curve,” says Springer. “It’s easy to install and configure. We’ve used other server-level antivirus software so we know that’s not something to take for granted.” SAS is deploying Forefront Security for SharePoint without any increase in its IT staff.

“That’s another advantage of using a Microsoft-based product,” says Booth. “We can leverage the expertise we already have in using Microsoft technology. The fact that we can easily add Forefront Security for SharePoint to our portfolio without the need for additional staff is very appealing to us.”

Adopting “version 1.0” of any software product can seem like a risk. When it comes to Forefront Security for SharePoint, SAS doesn’t see it that way.

“We’re very aware that Forefront Security for SharePoint is the successor to Microsoft Antigen,” says Kevin Angley, Manager of Messaging and Directory Resources, SAS. “Antigen has a tremendous reputation and our evaluation of Forefront Security for SharePoint validates this. Based on what we’ve heard—and what we’ve seen—we’re extremely comfortable with the product.”

Most importantly, Forefront Security for SharePoint is helping SAS to derive the maximum benefits from its new extranet while minimizing the risk associated with opening its environment through an extranet.

“With Forefront Security for SharePoint, we’re using the most advanced technology available in the most prudent way possible,” says Springer. “It’s what our customers expect of us.”

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about SAS products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.sas.com

Microsoft Forefront

For more information about the Microsoft Forefront security products, go to
www.microsoft.com/forefront

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. 

Document published March 2007