Cryptzone has unveiled a new version of its Microsoft SharePoint document security solution, Secured eCollaboration. 

In this latest version, new features have been added to secure content, without impeding searchability and collaboration between internal and external teams - both crucial capabilities for SharePoint projects. Essentially, the results are filtered according to a user's permissions, ensuring confidential information is only disclosed to those with the correct clearance.

"Organisations increasingly recognise the need to secure confidential information stored within SharePoint repositories," explains Anders Hansson, Product Portfolio Manager at Cryptzone. "Traditionally, SharePoint's search functionality leaves files encrypted at rest undiscoverable. This requires organisations to make trade-offs between their security posture, user productivity and convenience. By developing Encrypted Content Search in our Secured eCollaboration solution, we get around this deficiency, without compromising security." 

Utilising sophisticated approaches to key management and process whitelisting, encrypted content on SharePoint can only be searched and discovered by authorised users. This approach respects the principle of the separation of duties, preventing SharePoint administrators from viewing protected content.

With Secured eCollaboration installed, authorized users are able to perform search operations from within Microsoft SharePoint and find encrypted content that matches the search criteria entered. Secured eCollaboration makes use of Microsoft iFilter technologies to ensure the process is completely transparent to users, but only returns search results based on a user's entitlement to secured content on a document by document basis. 

Even though data at rest is fully encrypted and protected, content can quickly and easily be found by those people with the appropriate security clearance. Where necessary, Secured eCollaboration security administrators have added flexibility to enable or disable SharePoint powered file-searches of encrypted content on a user by user basis.

Version 5.0 of Secured eCollaboration also introduces support for SharePoint Form Based Authentication, which provides an alternative means of authentication to SharePoint using a web form. FBA is commonly used as a way of extending access to a SharePoint site for non-Active Directory users, so is ideal for corporate extranets, where supplier, partner and customer access is required. Secured eCollaboration adds an additional layer of non-intrusive protection for sensitive personal and commercial information assets.

Secured eCollaboration Rule Based Engine can now control SharePoint file permissions, making it possible to create rules that significantly extend SharePoint's native access controls:

Automated content-aware access control: Access rules can be defined and based on content, meta-data or other file attributes. For example, if a file containing sensitive information gets uploaded to a public area, RBE can automatically modify the SharePoint access control to prevent unintended exposure. 

Finer granularity of access rights: Access rights in SharePoint are typically managed at the document library level. With Secured eCollaboration user access can be assigned to individual documents, so if inadvertently moved to an unsecured document library they still retain their assigned user access rights and remain fully protected. 

Additional value for any Microsoft IRM/RMS setup: Secured eCollaboration makes sure access rights are accurately configured prior to applying encryption. 

Centralized File Access Management: The latest version of Secured eCollaboration also adds functionality for security officers to delegate file access to any user on request, or as part of a security audit. This increases the available options in any disaster or recovery process relating to sensitive information. At short notice there is an efficient yet effective way to correct or mitigate risks related to unintended data leakage. The file access management interface allows for assessing the integrity of an organisation's file-access perimeters, and provides mitigation options that have global impact instantly. Administrators can quickly locate a file, and grant or remove access to any user in the world - a powerful ability.

http://www.cryptzone.com/products/sep/secured-ecollaboration/