Boy oh boy – we’ve read the news…
Let us unpack it all for you.
First up: the huge investment Microsoft is going to make to expand the data centres in Zurich and Geneva but not only that, the initiative shall support several existing customers in regulated sectors such as healthcare and finance. We know from experience that especially these customers are struggling to get a wriggle on in their AI transformation journey due to regulations and security concerns. Which is absolutely fine considering they’re handling the most sensitive and personal data possible. So, we hope that this will be an important step to enable these companies to make the next step and also attend the worries of many other companies who have been delaying their AI transformation due to these same concerns.
Let’s address some of the thoughts that critical readers may have. Such a significant investment by a global tech giant could be seen as increasing corporate influence on national digital infrastructure and policies. Without a doubt, conversations need to be had with European and global partners to establish an environment where the above-mentioned sectors can thrive in the AI space and you and I as customers feel, we can trust Swiss companies handling our data.
Guy Parmelin emphasized that Microsoft's significant investment reflects confidence in Switzerland's ability to provide a stable and innovative environment for technological advancements. Although there may be concerns regarding data privacy and sovereignty, especially in regulated sectors like the mentioned, this expansion can also ensure data remains within Swiss borders. And this is good news.
On the note of security, let’s talk about with the second announcement, which had our security and modern workplace experts especially excited. Microsoft SSE (Security Service Edge) – now publicly available and already implemented by one of our customers (more details later in this blog) – is a cloud-delivered, identity-centric security solution designed to protect access to applications and resources—whether they are on-premises or in the cloud—from any location.
Universal Continuous Access Evaluation (CAE) is a platform feature of Global Secure Access (GSA) that works together with Microsoft Entra ID to ensure that access to the GSA edge is validated every time a connection to a new application resource is established. Universal CAE protects the GSA access tokens from theft and replay and will tag all traffic no matter the operating system, browser, or device form factor. Support for both client and remote network connectivity will be provided. Meaning administrators no longer have to manage proxy server configurations or complex network configurations. They can apply tenant restrictions on any platform by using the Global Secure Access client or remote networks.
What does that mean in less fancy words? It will make sure that an employee cannot sign in to another tenant when using its work device. Let’s assume I’m an employee of a financial institution and during my lunch break I’d like to prepare the general assembly for my sports club. This solution will block me form accessing my sports associations Teams environment.
We’ve implemented this solution together with one of our customers and that’s the feedback:
“mit dem neuen GA - GSA Client läuft es jetzt richtig geil auf dem MacBook “ - original comment
“With the new GA – GSA Client on my Mac the VPN connection is so simple and fast, it’s awsome” - translation
The feedback is really good. Although there are some minor bugs to cope with since the solution is new, it is worth the investment. Processes are way less complicated than before and compared to other solutions the Universal Continuous Access Evaluation is the unique selling point. With regards to AI, it can or will at some point be implemented, however, it currently comes in form of Security Copilot which in our opinion needs to be more affordable before we start to really dive in deep. We do recommend though that customer, who are looking into improving their security and governance take a closer look at the Microsoft Entra Suite. We find that most customers in highly regulated sectors are equipped with a Microsoft Entra ID P2 plan anyway so it’s a small step to the whole Entra Suite, which comes with the full stack of Entra Private Access and Microsoft Verified ID.
If this was helpful and you’d like to see more of this kind of informative blog posts, please check out more blog posts and of course do not hesitate to get in touch with Viktor to learn more about Microsoft’s SEE solution.
We’re looking forward to hearing from you.
Nicole and Viktor
Resource:
https://www.microsoft.com/de-ch/security/business/identity-access/microsoft-entra-verified-id