Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Customer Solution Case Study

			Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Customer Solution Case Study
			Telecommunications Leader Safeguards Sensitive Information and Critical Documents

Overview Country or Region: Switzerland Industry: Telecommunications Customer Profile Swisscom is Switzerland’s leading telecommunications enterprise. In 2004, the company produced revenue of CHF10.1 billion (U.S.$7.81 billion). Business Situation An internal audit identified a high risk in the unprotected storage and transmission of documents within the company, and the auditors recommended protective measures. Solution Swisscom implemented Microsoft® Windows® Rights Management Services for Windows ServerTM 2003 as an easy-to-use solution for safeguarding documents and e-mail communications from unauthorized access. Benefits Effective information security with low operational and financial overhead Fast adoption and excellent ease-of-use Security of sensitive content even outside of the corporate network			“A smooth integration of the solution into our work environment was important to us. RMS [Rights Management Services] optimally addresses that concern.” Adrian Turtschi, Head of Strategic IT Management, Swisscom
			An internal audit at Swisscom, the leading Swiss telecommunications enterprise, showed that the company did not effectively safeguard sensitive information and documents from unauthorized use. That risk was not acceptable to Swisscom. The company charged a subsidiary, Swisscom IT Services, with designing and implementing a rights-protection strategy. After evaluating several possible solutions, Swisscom deployed Microsoft® Windows® Rights Management Services (RMS) for Windows ServerTM 2003 as its rights-protection solution because of its ease-of-use, seamless integration into the corporate network and the Microsoft Office System software environment, and excellent cost-efficiency. Today, the solution is available to all 17,800 Swisscom employees. With a single mouse click, document authors can safeguard files from unauthorized access and minimize the risk to sensitive information.

Situation

With revenue of CHF4.9 billion (U.S.$3.79 billion) in the first six months of 2005 and 17,800 full-time employees, the Swisscom Group is the leading telecommunications enterprise in Switzerland. Swisscom Mobile’s Gordono Mobile Service (GMS) mobile network extends to 99 percent of the inhabited area of Switzerland and serves 4 million customers. Within the last year, Swisscom Fixnet increased the number of Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) connections from 656,000 to 948,000. At the end of June 2005, Swisscom also reported 3 million analog and 924,000 Integrated Services Digital Network (IDSN) telephone connections. The company’s Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) network was available to 90 percent of the Swiss population, already by the end of 2004. In June 2005, public wireless LAN (WLAN) was offered to users at more than 800 hot spots provided by Swisscom Mobile in Switzerland and at 2,137 international locations provided by Swisscom Eurospot.
Safeguarding sensitive information and documents is critical for Swisscom. The company’s employees work with confidential customer records, including financial and personal information, and create, use, and share documents with sensitive business information. Securing such content in e-mail messages or documents was challenging. “All employees could do was to compress files and protect them with a password,” says Markus Schütz, Technical Project Manager at Swisscom. That way of safeguarding information not only was inefficient, but also did not provide a high level of security. Only a few employees protected files in this manner.
However, reliable protection from viewing of sensitive information by unauthorized, third parties was too important to Swisscom to accept the status quo. An internal audit at Swisscom noted a high risk potential resulting from the unprotected storage and transmission of information within the company and recommended security measures.
In February 2004, Swisscom began a project to research and implement effective document and information security. Swisscom IT Services, a Swisscom subsidiary and leading provider of IT services in Switzerland, presented IT managers of its parent company with several options to address their information security concerns. Swisscom’s criteria for an information security solution were effective, demonstrable risk reduction and ease-of-use. Company managers also were concerned with the costs of acquiring and operating a solution.

Solution

RMS implementation took approximately four months. Swisscom used Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 to distribute the solution, and Group Policy, a management technology in Windows Server 2003, to activate it on the client computers.

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  The logging database records all requests and responses received and made by the RMS Server.
  
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  The configuration database houses the entire RMS configuration.
  
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  The directory service database contains information about users, e-mail addresses, and distribution lists.
  

Active Directory®, the central directory service for the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system, makes the information in the directory service database available. A hardware security module secures the private keys required for safeguarding documents. Explaining this measure, Schütz says, “This [hardware solution] is more secure than a software-based solution.”

Adrian Turtschi, Head of Strategic IT Management at Swisscom, says, “A smooth integration of the solution into our work environment was important to us. RMS optimally addresses that concern.”

To familiarize employees with the new information security solution, Swisscom used Web casts and Web-based employee trainings about security concerns, use of RMS, and standards for information security. Adoption of RMS by employees did not take long. In July 2005, almost six months after the implementation, the RMS Server recorded a high number of 2,000 very active users.

Security of Sensitive Content Even Outside of the Corporate Network

To enforce information security policies outside of the company network as well as inside, Swisscom uses RMS also in communications with business partners. To facilitate rights protection in this context, the company uses the Microsoft .NET Passport service, which assumes a comparable role to that of Active Directory as the central authentication system within the company’s network infrastructure. External e-mail exchanges are supported by an RMS Server provided by Microsoft. “By using RMS, Swisscom can protect sensitive documents even in communications with partners,” says Schütz. “However, partners are responsible for their own rights protection once they save and store files.”
One fact that clearly demonstrates Swisscom’s satisfaction with RMS is that subsidiary Swisscom IT Services recommends the solution to its other clients, especially those for whom it hosts the complete business infrastructure.


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The Microsoft Windows Server 2003 family helps organizations do more with less. Now you can: Run your IT infrastructure more efficiently; Build better applications faster; Deliver the best infrastructure for enhancing user productivity. And you can do all this faster, more securely, and at lower cost.