As previewed earlier this month, Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) 2010 has been released to manufacturing. The evaluation software is now available here.
Part of our Business Ready Strategy, Forefront UAG enables organizations to give employees (and trusted partners and vendors) secure remote access to corporate resources. With its focus on application intelligence and granular access control, UAG is an ideal solution all of your remote access needs that provides centralized management and policy control across all users, devices, and network resources.
Building on its predecessor, Intelligent Application Gateway, UAG enables remote access via managed and unmanaged PCs and mobile devices. It integrates a deep understanding of applications, the health state of end user devices, and the user’s identity for greater security and reduced management costs.
While UAG provides a variety of connectivity options, such web publishing and SSL VPN tunnels, one of the best new features is UAG’s support and enhancements for Windows DirectAccess (DA). DA is the future of remote access allowing for seamless, always-on connectivity. Always-on keeps users happy as they are continually productive, but it also keeps administrators content as users are “always-managed.” UAG helps make DA deployments simpler, more extensible and easier to scale
The Solution Accelerator team has released a new guide for UAG which outlines the critical infrastructure design elements that are key to the successful implementation. Use this guide to shorten your Forefront UAG infrastructure planning and deployment time!
· Download the IPD Guide for Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway.
· Visit the Forefront Unified Access Gateway page on TechNet to learn more.
Forefront Client Security received its 11th consecutive VB100 award for the December 2009 Edition of Virus Bulletin. Microsoft Security Essentials for consumers received its first VB100 award for its very first submission. In order to be awarded the VB100, a product must detect 100% of the "WildList" malware samples and not have any false positives on the Virus Bulletin clean file collection.
Details on the Forefront results are here (free registration required.)
We've published the following white papers for deploying and managing the new Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange.
This white paper discusses the new e-mail hygiene protection features available in the Forefront Protection for Exchange Server 2010 (FPE 2010), illustrates functionality available for protecting Exchange Server deployments at the FPE 2010 RTM time, and outlines integration with Exchange server features contributing to the Forefront antispam solution.
Read this white paper to get answers to antispam questions related to Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server.
Read this white paper to learn how the Forefront Management Shell provides a fully scriptable interface into Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (FPE 2010). The FPE 2010 administrator console is implemented on top of the PowerShell interface, providing assurance that all functionality provided in the console is also implemented within PowerShell.
This white paper provides insight into the multi-engine antimalware scanning options, as well as the Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server process sequence for malware scanning and filtering. Administrators can leverage this knowledge to maintain a secure and sophisticated messaging system.
Read this white paper to learn about changes to the different types of feedback and data provided by Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server including new dashboard with health monitor, incident and quarantine records, expanded performance counters and e-mail notification improvements.
Today Microsoft's Health Solutions Group announced the acquisition of Sentillion, a company based in Andover, MA which provides healthcare industry solutions for context management, user provisioning and single sign-on (SSO).
The primary goal of the acquisition is to make it easier for healthcare professionals to deliver better patient care by streamlining access to multiple IT applications and patient data. By combining Sentillion’s technologies with Microsoft Amalga UIS, Microsoft aims to give clinicians new insight about patients in real time and enable them to perform the appropriate task with unprecedented speed.
This ties to our efforts in identity & access management - part of the Business Ready Security strategy - to deliver capabilities in the Active Directory platform, and through next-generation products, such as the Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager 2010.
The acquisition brings complementary assets to Microsoft in the areas of single sign-on (SSO), user provisioning and context management that are focused on the healthcare industry. As we integrate Sentillion into Microsoft in the coming months, we will further explore synergies with Microsoft’s identity and access management solutions, such as our Forefront products.
Leading security news site Dark Reading reports on the release of Forefront Threat Management Gateway - including some insightful quotes:
Analyst Rob Enderle: "By focusing on the employee, Microsoft is beginning to address what I believe are some of the most vulnerable parts of the current enterprise. With this, Microsoft is beginning to transition from a company trying to catch up to the market to one that is trying to lead it."
Analyst Chenxi Wang, principal analyst for security and risk management at Forrester. "This is a major step up from what ISA could do in securing Web access. If Microsoft wants to play more in the enterprise security game, it needs to add more functionality to it, and they did in this release."
Customer George Podolak of Architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, a TMG customer, uses the gateway to protect both its end users and the business from malware when its users visit social networking or other sites. "I'm not against Facebook [and we allow our users to access it], but when you're using it, we don't want you to wander off to a malware site."