Microsoft TechEd2006 Security Announcements

Microsoft has already made several announcement related to security at this week's TechEd 2006. Ted Kummert, vice president of Microsoft's Security, Access and Solutions Division (SASD), had this to say about the announcements.

Q: Can you give us a quick overview of the security product news being announced today?

Kummert: Today we are outlining our updated security product strategy and roadmap and announcing the new Microsoft Forefront brand, which will be rolled out with the next wave of our business security and secure access products across client server and network edge.

Q: Tell us about the next generation of Microsoft Forefront products.

Kummert: The first Microsoft Forefront products will be Forefront Client Security (formerly Microsoft Client Protection), scheduled for open beta in the fourth quarter of this year, and the next generation of our Antigen products. Forefront Security for Exchange Server and Forefront Security for SharePoint are timed to coincide with the upcoming Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Office 2007 launches. As Microsoft ISA Server continues to evolve, customers can also expect a Forefront version of our integrated edge security and access gateway. To provide customers with further choice and flexibility, Forefront products will be available as stand alone solutions or as part of the Enterprise CAL suite, the Exchange Enterprise CAL suite or an integrated security product suite.

Q: What are the key customer pain points Forefront products seek to address?

Kummert: Customers are facing a broader, more complex and diversely motivated threat landscape. Attacks are increasingly advanced, more carefully targeted and often aimed at specific applications. In protecting themselves from these threats, customers are faced with a vast array of solutions, each of which will protect a given point against a specific threat. However, implementing such a combined collection of security solutions can provoke configuration and integration difficulties, making it more costly and complex to manage, control and report on the security of their environment.

By equipping customers with the ability to effectively secure their environment and securely enable the access scenarios their businesses require, Forefront products will help them unlock the full business value of IT applications and infrastructure.

Q: Today you announced product news on Microsoft ISA Server 2006 and Forefront Client Security. How will these products add value to customers?

Kummert: Microsoft ISA Server 2006 is an integrated edge security gateway that helps protect IT environments from Internet-based threats while providing users with fast and secure remote access to applications and data. ISA Server addresses key customer needs in a number of increasingly prevalent business scenarios.

For Branch Office customers who need to connect to and secure branch offices while efficiently utilizing network bandwidth, the product provides HTTP compression, caching of content--including software updates – and site-to-site VPN capabilities integrated with application-layer filtering. To address the growing prevalence of Web-based threats, ISA Server also provides Web Access Protection with a hybrid proxy-firewall architecture, deep content inspection, granular policies, and comprehensive alerting and monitoring capabilities. Finally, for customers who require secure access to Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and other Web applications from outside the corporate network, ISA Server 2006 offers Secure Application Publishing. This is a huge value add for companies with large remote workforces, companies like Northwest Airlines, who take advantage of ISA’s tight integration with Active Directory and Exchange to provide secure remote access to applications.

Microsoft Forefront Client Security (formerly Microsoft Client Protection), is currently in private beta and feedback from this program has led us to make a number of enhancements to the product. One of the key challenges customers face when protecting desktops and laptops is that of controlling and managing the state of client security across the organization.

As a result of customer feedback, we have enhanced two key features designed to improve system manageability; the State Assessment Scan, which helps determine which machines need patches or are configured insecurely, and Single Profile Configuration, which simplifies security policy implementation across the organization. By simplifying the visibility and management of desktop and laptop security, we can enable IT administrators to better secure their environments, regardless of where those machines may be located. Microsoft Forefront Client Security will be available as a public beta in the fourth quarter of this year, and is expected to be broadly available in the second quarter of next year. Microsoft Forefront Client Security’s scanning engine and definition updates benefit from the malware data Microsoft collects from a number of sources, including our Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT). Today, we released a whitepaper detailing the malware threats we’ve detected and analyzed over the last 15 months through the MSRT.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:13 AM  Permalink