Update on Forefront security management

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As enterprise IT evolves, Microsoft continues to evolve its Forefront security management strategy. In order to best help customers simplify the security experience and manage compliance, we are aligning security management with systems and application management.

As part of this strategy, Forefront Protection Manager (FPM) will not be released to market. Instead, multi-server management for Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (FPE) and Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint (FPSP) will be delivered through a streamlined solution for messaging and collaboration workloads, both on-premises and in the cloud. We will share additional details on this solution in the future.

To address customer needs in the near-term, we will release the following in the second half of 2010 at no additional cost to FPE and FPSP customers:

· A Service Pack release for our established Forefront Server Security Management Console (FSSMC) that will expand support for multi-server management to the latest versions of FPE and FPSP.

· A Forefront Server Security Script Kit that will allow IT administrators to use Remote PowerShell to configure and report on multiple deployments of FPE and FPSP throughout the enterprise.

More about our long term strategy:

We are aligning security management with systems and application management at two levels. The first level will deliver risk management across protection, access, and identity, providing end-to-end visibility into the enterprise and helping enable compliance. The second level will operationalize and simplify security management by building on application workloads and providing a consistent management experience across physical, virtual, and cloud environments.

As part of this strategy, we announced earlier that Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 will be built on System Center Configuration Manager for centralized deployment, configuration, updating, and reporting. This will allow customers to configure, patch, and protect their desktops and laptops with the same infrastructure, delivering comprehensive security with greater efficiency. This solution is on track for a planned release to market in the second half of 2010.