Introduction

There is a high level of security inherent in all the Lync Server features. Unified communications, from a customer's point of view, require a special level of privacy and control, and Lync is designed with mechanisms to answer to this need in a clear manner. Lync updates (both on the client and on the server side) have added to the software a flexibility in design, so that it is now possible, for example, to use certificate authentication or passive authentication for mobility scenarios, or to add a two-factor authentication (as we will see in Chapter 2, Lync 2013 Authentication). In this chapter, we are going to talk about some of the security aspects related to the infrastructure. Lync 2013 security has two different scopes, one related to the network where the servers are located, and one related to the services we make available to the external users. The recipes regarding Role-Based Access Control and servers and database hardening are more relevant to protect our deployment from threats that come from the corporate network, while the topics related to ethical walls, reverse proxy, and edge security are fundamental aspects when the communication extends to the Internet.

A fundamental document that you should read as a starting point is the Security Framework for Lync Server 2013 post (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn481316.aspx), which will give you a high-level overview of the security features inside Lync Server 2013.