Is it possible to take our current sharepoint services 3.0 intranet site thats internal...and make it publicy accessible from the outside so our employees can get to it? Can this be done? If so, are there any security issues? How would authentication be handled? because now they are authenticated against our active directory. Thank you!!

Is it possible? Yes.Are there security concernse? Yes.Opening a SharePoint site to the public should never be note without proper consideration. That being said - there are many different ways to accomplish this. Here are some things to consider:1. Always have a firewall in front of the SharePoint server only allowing the required ports through.2. Consider putting another SharePoint WFE in a DMZ between the public internet and your corporate network.3. Consider having your employees VPN into your network in order to access SharePoint. This would require no changes to your current design.This is just the tip of the planning iceberg. Choose and approach and fully research before implementing.I hope this helps and answers your question-Jeff DeVerter, MCSERackspaceblog:http://www.social-point.comtwitter: http://www.twitter.com/jdeverter

Is it possible to take our current sharepoint services 3.0 intranet site thats internal...and make it publicy accessible from the outside so our employees can get to it? Can this be done? If so, are there any security issues? How would authentication be handled? because now they are authenticated against our active directory.Thank you!! You can:-Extend existing web application in Central Admoinistration to another IIS web-site (or on existing with different name (hostheader)) - http://svr:port/_admin/extendwebfarm.aspx?WebApplicationId=-You can make it with Forms based authentification or with anonymus access.- This site must be resolved in internet DNSMCTS

To make your SharePoint site accessible from internet, besides the VPN solution provided by Jeff and the Form based authentication solution by Kichin, you can also publish the site with ISA server. ISA Server can authenticate client requests using either Integrated Windows authentication or Basic authentication, since we recommend you to use HTTPS to publish the site, Basic authentication will not sacrifice the security.

I've noticed that a lot of responses are telling you it can be done (which is true) but are you asking in order to see "how it's done?" If that is the case, I'll see if I can "scratch this down" for you. For a more in-depth look at this aspect, I recommend Trainsignal's "SharePoint 2007 Video Tutorial:" http://www.trainsignal.com/SharePoint-Server-2007-Training-P25.aspxI've got my organization focused on using this tool; it saved us $16K($2K per person) because it's the same training you get at the boot camps (actually, better and more in-depth, plus you can always go back).As a few other folks have mentioned, doing this means folks will be accessing the site across the open internet. The good news is that you can use ISA Server to help secure SharePoint if you're going to use what's referred to as "alternate access mappings" (this is demonstrated in the SharePoint video tutorial). Additionally, the video instructor (Benjamin Culbertson) shows you briefly how to configure ISA to work with SharePoint. Check it out...Jay CERTIFIED: CCNA, Network+, Security+, Server+