Entourage security

P

Phil

I work in an office that currently is using Outlook for OS 9 in Classic. We
have Entourage X installed on most of them, but we are currently not
employing it, as we've been unable to figure out how to make Entourage
more secure.

Outlook, for example, will only open an Exchange server email account after
a password has successfully been entered. Unless offline folders have been
configured, the only way to access email is with a proper password and
username.

When Entourage is opened, however, it automatically opens the inbox for
the user (or the most recently used identity in the 2004 version) and
prompts for a password to retrieve new mail. However, if you cancel out of
the password, you can still read email that has already been retrieved from
the server, thus creating an email security risk.

Is there a way to password protect Entourage (either v. X or 2004) so that no
email can be accessed (whether previously retrieved or not) without a
password?

Also, is there a setting to prompt the user which identity to use when
launching the application, so as to not give multiple users on the same
machine access to other people's email? And giving different Mac OS X
logins to each individual user (Microsoft's official support solution) is
unacceptable. Our operating methods often do not facilitate giving different
logins to each user on a machine.

Thanks,

Phil
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

It's time to wake up, Phil, to the fact that you're now using OS X. OS X is
designed to be multi-user with rigid security. You need to change your
"operating methods", like it or not. If you gave every user his/her own user
on the computer, you could protect everyone with absolute security, as I'm
sure you must know.

Leaving just one OS user open and hoping you can assign different identities
in Entourage and still have some protection is unreasonable - there is no
pretence at protection or security. Separate identities are for convenience
where privacy does not matter - to segregate business materials from
personal, or two people who do not need any security.

Yes, you can set the "Choose an Identity" window to open at launch (just
check the box in it that says "Show this list at launch". But a) you can't
password-protect them and b) even if you could, anyone can disable that
checkbox. Identities are not designed for security. The reason why is that
they could never provide it (Entourage is not exclusively an Exchange server
client - identities can have POP and IMAP, on-disk Address Book, Calendar,
etc) and _because it was also designed to work with OS X's multi-user
security_.

So you either need to stick with Outlook 2001, whose exclusive Exchange
setup allows the server to provide security, and stay in Classic until
Kingdom come since it's working how you want it, or change your operating
methods to providing an OS X user account for every user. I'd also wait
until you can provide Entourage 2004 to everyone, since X won't be
satisfactory to most Outlook users.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - **2004**, X
or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.
 
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