But if compliance is required, don't you have to abide and make decision based on both real security as well as compliance?
Nothing makes you abide by good security other than the risk of being sued over it. So no, you don't have to abide by both. Is it best to, sure of course, if you value you company.
This thread is inspired by the never-ending thread about licensing and replication in I Can't Even.
I know that developers who use Visual Studio probably get their Visual Studio license through an MSDN subscription. One benefit of the subscription is that you're allowed to spin up Windows servers, SQL servers, etc., for development and testing.
For organizations who have full-on lab environments or IT staff who need to spin up a VM Windows Server VM here and there to try something out, how do they stay in compliance? Do they also buy a MSDN subscription (perhaps MSDN platforms) for the IT staff member? Do they have their IT staff continually use Windows server 180-day evaluation licenses? Do they turn a blind eye as they give their IT staff activation keys from a dev's MSDN subscription and hope their organization is never audited?
MSDN subscriptions are user-specific. To stay in compliance, every person who wants to take advantage of an MSDN benefit, will need to have their own MSDN subscription. They cannot be shared. Any VM spun up under the MSDN subscription cannot be used in any way by another person.
Ah, didnt read the full OP post and assumed it was for him.
However Bizspark MSDN does provide startup organizations with multiple user accounts all for internal use and testing. It is not for production or internal use.
Yeah. It's not for me. I was just musing about the test VMs and such we need to spin up as IT, and I was curious how larger businesses or businesses with test labs license those test Windows VMs. I figured MSDN platforms wasn't used because of [see the above responses], but perhaps truth was going to be stranger than fiction.
Larger is different. Once you are of any size you have enterprise agreements and your labs are just covered.
