Security

Microsoft on Thursday said it is delaying the release of its Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 antimalware product for Windows desktops and servers until the second half of next year.

Forefront Endpoint Protection is a component of the upcoming Forefront Protection Suite, formerly code-named "Stirling."

"Based on customer feedback and market trends, we have made the strategic decision to build Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) on System Center Configuration Manager, Microsoft's solution to comprehensively assess, deploy, and update servers, clients, and devices," the company said in a blog post.

"This approach better aligns our customers' client management and security infrastructure, helping simplify deployment and reduce costs," the post said. "We are confident this is the right decision for our customers."

In the interim, Microsoft said, it will continue to offer its Forefront Client Security solution to customers.

Meanwhile, Microsoft said it is on track to release related products, including Forefront Protection Manager, in the first half of next year.

Updated 5:20 p.m. PDT with more details and comments from Microsoft executive.

Microsoft will begin offering its first hosted security service under the Forefront brand on Thursday, dubbed Forefront Online Security for Exchange and designed to help keep malware and spam out of e-mail in-boxes.

The hosted service, which will cost $20 per user per year or less based on volume licensing, targets enterprise Exchange customers and includes a Web-based console for setting up policies for virus and spam protection, said Doug Leland, general manager of Microsoft's Identity and Security Business Group.

The releases will follow the timeline of Exchange 2010, which entered public beta this week. More hosted security services will be coming but Leland declined to elaborate.

Microsoft also will finally release on Thursday a new, public beta version of its Stirling security suite, which is the next generation of the Forefront software.

The initial beta version of Stirling was released a year ago and was supposed to be refreshed by the end of 2008. It will include client, server, and application security technology and offer a single management console.

Stirling components will come in staggered releases starting later this year with Forefront Security for Exchange and Threat Management and continuing through the first half of 2010, Leland said.

The company also is changing the name of its Identity Lifecycle Manager product to Forefront Identity Manager and plans to offer a new set of technologies, code-named Geneva, for helping corporations improve the security of software and services, Microsoft said.

In addition, Microsoft said it is investing $75 million in a partner ecosystem, including making a strategic partnership with RSA. Other companies integrating with Stirling include Kaspersky, Brocade, Juniper Networks, Guardium, Imperva, Sourcefire, StillSecure, Q1 Labs, and Tipping Point.

The moves are part of the company's strategy to provide "Business Ready Security."

The moves are part of Microsoft's effort to broaden the scope of its security offerings to incorporate data protection, access and management, all built around the concept of identity, Leland said.

Microsoft wants to offer the ability for corporations to set "fine-grained security policies and have a deeper understanding about who in the organization is trying to access data and what they are trying to do with it," he said.

Microsoft made its Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) beta 2 version available on Friday, adding antimalware and Secure Sockets Layer inspection but also offering an edge protection service to its latest operating-system platform.

TMG beta 2 is designed to provide a safe Web surfing environment for employees, said Bill Jensen, senior product manager for TMG, which used to be called ISA Server.

Microsoft has added built-in antimalware that detects and blocks infected files from entering the network and a network inspection service, or intrusion prevention, that blocks viruses and other malicious code based on their signature and their behavior, he said.

TMG Beta 2 also allows corporations to monitor SSL traffic. It decrypts the traffic, inspects it for malware, and then re-encrypts it. However, exceptions can be made on an individual basis if, for instance, an executive does not want the SSL traffic between her bank Web site and the office network to be inspected, according to Jensen.

In the future, TMG also will include URL filtering so administrators can block employee access to sites hosting malware and porn, and other undesirable content.

Beyond the new technology features, the big change from TMG's predecessor ISA Server is that it works on 64-bit servers, said Don Retallack, research vice president for systems management and security at Directions on Microsoft.

"ISA Server 2006 won't run on Windows Server 2008 or on 64-bit servers, so this is a migration of one of their edge protection packages to run on their most modern operating system," he said.

Targeting the 64-bit platform enabled Microsoft to really stretch the software, Jensen said.

"Security is a performance-greedy application," he said. "We made the decision to focus on the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 because it allows us to provide scalability up to the largest environments, allows us to provide more memory and more processors, and to do deep levels of inspection into this traffic without sacrificing performance."

General availability of the product is slated for the second half of the year. TMG also is integrated with its Stirling security suite.

Microsoft has more information on a blog post.