NEWS: Microsoft announces Next Generation Forefront Security Technologies

Posted by: kurtsh | August 20, 2009

NEWS: Microsoft announces Next Generation Forefront Security Technologies

Back on July 13th, there was a massive announcement made at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference detailing the upcoming suite of Microsoft’s security technologies.

The biggest of these was the Forefront Protection Suite (formerly Forefront Security Suite). FPS is an umbrella that covers 6 different products that are purchaseable either as a suite or ala carte/individually:

Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 (formerly Forefront Client Security)
This is a comprehensive anti-malware solution for both clients & servers that provides the industry’s best antivirus/antispyware, local firewall management, network access protection integration, detailed enterprise reporting, and rootkit/malicious software removal.
Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (formerly Forefront Security for Exchange)
Forefront Protection 2010 for Sharepoint (formerly Forefront Security for Sharepoint)
This provides a unique multilayered malware protection engine as well as an antispam solution that enables administrators to simultaneously leverage up to 5 of 9 antivirus engines from such security vendors as Kaspersky, Sophos, Norman, CA, Authentium, & AhnLabs in addition to Microsoft’s own MSAV engine for filtering/protection Exchange email.
Forefront Online Security for Exchange Server
This is the hosted security solution that filters inbound/outbound email of malware & spam before it ever touches a customer’s infrastructure, enabling dramatic reductions in messaging traffic (since 95% of all email received is spam) and providing a strong layer of anti-malware security that it automatically maintained without any labor by the subscriber. It leverages the hosted technologies from our best of breed acquisition of Frontbridge.
Forefront Protection Manager (formerly Forefront Server Security Management Console)
The first Microsoft security management console to provide an end-to-end view of all aspects of protection available to a customer from the Internet gateway to the antivirus solutions on servers to the malware protection on clients and both report & manage all of them from a single pane of glass.
Forefront Threat Management Gateway Web Security Service ** (formerly Internet Security & Acceleration Server)
Microsoft’s dramatic next version of Internet Security & Acceleration Server features powerful Threat Management technologies to ensure not just to keep the bad guys out, but to also anaylze what’s legitimately coming in. Or at least what it looks like.

** Forefront TMG must be licensed on a per-processor basis however it falls under the umbrella of FPS because of Forefront Protection Manager’s capabilities of monitoring and managing it as part of the end-to-end Forefront security management process.

Additionally 3 other technologies/products were announced