After the first installation or an upgrade to a licensed version from an Evaluation installation Forefront Server products must be activated by entering the “License Agreement Number” (LAN), this code is provided along with the contract. ...

We have already announced the changes of engines availability due on the 1st of December, it´s important to understand that the SpamCure antispam engine by Mail Filters will also be retired. We have invested in new antispam technology through a partnership...

This blog explains a problem with file transfers in Office Communications Server. The symptoms are that files are being blocked between two clients, but Forefront is not logging any incidents and no notifications are being generated. In order to...

Although Microsoft doesn’t recommended any particular RBL (Realtime Block List) provider for use with Antigen products, Spamhaus is one of the most widely-known providers on the market. It’s come to our attention recently that Spamhaus has phased...

Microsoft announced today the release of four service packs from the Antigen and Forefront product families that provide leading protection for customer’s Exchange and SharePoint environments. To download the service packs, and for more information about...

Ever seen the programlog.txt just stop logging? Me neither until the last couple of days. To backtrack a bit, the programlog.txt is the most used and most important of all of the Antigen/Forefront Server logs. It lives in the \Data subfolder of...

Good day everybody, some weeks ago I dealt with a request that took me quite sometimes and lots of tests, I thought I should share this on our blog as to save someone´s head hake. The request was: I want to set a File Filter to prevent Standard...

Customers often ask us the best way to update their scan engines in their specific environment, so I’m writing this blog to go through the main scenarios that customers face and to discuss how to best choose an update method that suits your individual...

Some links to useful information about Antigen/Forefront Server Security Official MS pages: starts here to find presentations, evaluate the product on-line through our virtual labs and download trial software. Forefront Server...

As of today 9th of march 2010, here are the latest versions of Antigen and Forefront Server Security products with relevant kb articles. Latest versions are always the “recommended ones”, support specialists may ask you to upgrade your system to the...

Following article explains how Exchange Intelligent Message Filtering (IMF) and Antigen Advanced Spam Manager (ASM) work together. Specifically how SCL ratings are assigned IMF Options Blocking spam with the IMF is a two-stage process. The filter...

Microsoft recently released Rollup 5 for Antigen 9 SP1 , which contains a particularly important fix for Exchange 2000 / 2003 clusters. The full issue behind this fix is documented in KB957015 . Essentially, the ‘fix’ adds a new Antigen Cluster Resource...

Hello, my name is Robert McCarthy and I am a support engineer for the Antigen and Forefront Server product set. Since the advent of Antigen, its hallmark feature has been the ability to incorporate multiple third party scan engines into our scan jobs...

The virus world has always seen a battle between virus makers and anti-virus vendors, each trying to outwit each other through their speed and technology. Antigen and Forefront products incorporate proprietary and 3 rd -party anti-virus scan engines that...

This blog entry gives you an overview of licensing for Antigen 9 and Forefront Server Security products, such as FSE and FSSP. Your product’s expiration date can depend on several factors. Historically, Antigen licensing was controlled by a file...

‘Illegal Mime Header’ is an important feature in Antigen/Forefront. This blog entry describes the expected functionality of this feature from the Antigen 9 for Exchange/SMTP with SP1 and Forefront for Exchange RTM (SP0) releases. The ‘Illegal Mime...

As I’m writing this blog, the Antigen/Forefront Worm List was last updated over 3 months ago. Don’t be alarmed – this is quite normal. The Worm List isn’t really a “scan engine” you see, and doesn’t need to update so often. And why might that be...

We often get asked how to enable the “anti-spam” feature in Forefront. Well, there isn’t one, so there! That’s the quick answer anyway. Although its predecessor, Antigen, uses a 3 rd -party anti-spam engine, Forefront Server Security for Exchange...

As part of performance optimisation for Forefront Server Security for Exchange 2007, certain filtering features are disabled on different scanjobs. In terms of the Forefront Server Security Administrator client you will see these options, but they will...

My name is Joe Anderson, and I work with the CSS Security Support Team. Having firsthand experience with customers, I wanted to give some insight into things that we request when troubleshooting a particular issue. Below, I describe several of the...

I wanted to introduce you to a handy, but little-known tool that we have for FSSMC (Forefront Server Security Management Console). The Log Purge Tool comprises of a GUI and some SQL scripts, which allow you to easily backup and purge old data from your...

There are several different accounts and permissions that are required for successful installation of Forefront server products. This blog discusses those accounts and permissions, however complex environments may need additional information not covered...

Diagnostic logging is helpful information that can be used by Microsoft support technicians to help troubleshoot problems that are occurring while Forefront Security Management Console (FSSMC) is not working properly. To accurately diagnose a problem...

The CSS Security Support Team will be posting to this blog to inform FSS customers about common support issues seen in the field. If you have a topic you would like to see covered, please post a comment and we will attempt to address it. Thanks, ...