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Microsoft Search Server 
By: Dan Morrill 2007-11-07 Enterprise search is a big issue, not only do people squirrel stuff away on various computers, the problem of finding data across the enterprise can be very difficult, the more distributed the data, the more difficult to find. Data can reside anywhere, laptops, desktops, server systems, as well as just about anything else you can plug into a network.
Microsoft aims to end some of that pain with an enterprise class search engine based on technology that it uses in SharePoint. You can get the software here. Sue Feldman, a vice president at research firm IDC, agrees that cost and ease of installation will be key components to the success of the offering, particularly among small businesses, where there is currently little enterprise search penetration. "There is no question that they will buy into Microsoft's strategy, as knowledge workers absolutely need to be able to find their own stuff, never mind what the company has. If the search engine is free and easy to implement, and it sure sounds like Microsoft's is, I would expect people to avail themselves of this, even if it is just to create an accessible collection of information," she told eWEEK. Source: EWeek We all know folks who keep data all over the place, we also know that there are people who will not want to participate in anything like this because they have "personal stuff" on the company computer. From a network and data security viewpoint, this is almost a dream come true tool, if you limit it to just the security department, you can "Google hack" your own network and find out where people are squirreling away data that they should not have, or should not be storing off line. Now here is the evil side, think evil act good that all security engineers should be doing. Download a free copy of windows 2003 server, put it on a Virtual Machine, and then use the new enterprise search that is also free to find cool incriminating documents, or take a snapshot of what is happening in the company document and data wise, then sell to the highest bidder. Not implausible if you have an insider who is really interested in selling company data, which is not unheard of. The key to discovering something like this is to have a nice handy signature for this software that can be plugged into an IDS system of choice, to watch for folks who are doing something just like this. That is the interesting part, security engineers need to be working out how to track and trace this new software across the company network, just to make sure that someone unauthorized is not doing something evil with it. Time to break out the protocol analyzers and see what you can work out with how the system works, and what is common across all attempts to connect to a system. This is one of the reasons that being a security engineer is fun, someone hands out a great tool with obvious benefits for the enterprise, and it is the security engineers job to see how it can be used for both good and evil purposes, then work out a risk management countermeasures process that keeps legitimate uses up on line, while finding and shutting down rouge folks along the way. Comments Tag: Microsoft Add to  Del.icio.us |  Digg |  Reddit |  Furl Have a bookmark! -  About the Author: Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management. Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through his blog, Managing Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the ITtoolbox blogging community. |
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