back to article Office 365 hard enough to penetrate US government

Microsoft’s cloud productivity pack Office 365 has won an important certification from the US government, by ticking off all the to-do’s on the list to comply with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). FISMA requires US government agencies to develop and maintain security controls, the better to protect the …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I think I'll pass...

    ... on mentioning that so very subtle and completely inconspicuous link at the end of the article.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Not surprising...

    Governments (in general, including mine) are bound to love this. It saves them the trouble (brain usage) from having to figure out where to get the stuff.

    Mr. Black: "See, I can do it tool; we no need those admin guys no more, yahoo!".

    Next (fictional!)! year: "Office 365 suffered from a malfunction, anyone could get access!".

    Mr. Black: "I wasn't the one to blame, those darned admin guys never told me the risks of using this. We need need new laws on systems administration!".

    "darned admin guys" (response never to be found in the media under normal circumstances): "you're the one who fired us for suggesting NOT to use that stuff in the first place a**"pocket").

    OK, I am jesting here because in all fairness I am a fan of MS Office 2010. But I also think to know how government works and as such...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not surprising...

      Sadly, I think that's the wrong icon. Because while as a help desk non-entity I am relatively safe, that's exactly the approach they are taking for our cloud mail migration project. Now it might make a lot of sense for much of what we are doing and be more cost effective (it supposedly implements one of those fail-safe we can find any messages related to litigation that might one day arise packages we couldn't otherwise afford), it hasn't been exactly smooth or problem-free. For instance certain kinds of document exchanges that use to be simple are now rather complicated. And scheduling meetings with the calendar software is something of a nightmare.

  3. eulampios

    what else in their sleeve

    Yeah, the government is smart and does know that the next leap year is going to be in only four years and it's safe enough until then. However, MS might have some other interesting stuff in its long sleeve.

    1. It wasnt me
      Happy

      Re: what else in their sleeve

      Indeed, although most of their tat appears to be pulled straight from their wizard's sleeve.

  4. Tom 7

    I wonder if the FISMA standards

    were kept in MS Systems and modified to suit the current state of play?

  5. JimmyPage Silver badge
    FAIL

    Meh

    still covered under the Patriot Act, so totally unsuitable for non-US companies.

  6. Tom 13

    Caution, There's FISMA

    and then there's FISMA. Sort of like the old RS-232 standard for those posters old enough to remember it.

  7. despairing citizen
    Joke

    For further details on the quality of US Gov security standards

    please see wikileaks

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