 | By Ryan Russell I attended Microsoft’s ForeFront and Systems Center launch event on May 2 for the Redmond company’s new security and management products. As you know, I work for a company that sells products in these areas, and I’m not performing a review, but I do want to present to you some of the information I gathered. |
ForeFront Security 2007 centralizes MS antimalware
Microsoft has several products now in its Enterprise Security arsenal. These include ForeFront Security for Exchange Server, ForeFront Security for SharePoint, and ForeFront Client Security. The ForeFront brands encompass Microsoft’s antivirus (AV) and antispyware technologies.
Both ForeFront for Exchange and ForeFront for SharePoint are server-based solutions. In both cases, Microsoft claims that they are designed with these particular servers in mind. I’ve heard horror stories in the past about ordinary AV products detecting a virus inside the monolithic Exchange message store, and deleting the whole file. Microsoft says that because of the design, its product is more accurate and performs better.
The most interesting thing I heard about the ForeFront server products is that Microsoft has licensed eight different AV engines from various vendors and has them running under a unified management interface and update procedure. At any given time, you can pick up to five engines to scan information on the server. Microsoft claims that this gives you broader and quicker coverage for new malware threats.
The ForeFront for Client Security product is a different engine and set of AV signatures, developed in-house at Microsoft. One presenter said that Microsoft has spent "a couple hundred million dollars" developing its own engine, signatures, and workforce for its client products.
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