14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, Microsoft made available for download the Customer Technology Preview of its Microsoft Endpoint Protection for Windows Azure.
The new release provides all the necessary tools to add AntiMalware protection in Windows Azure Web and Worker roles.
It can offer protection for each of the Windows Azure virtual machine running customer’s Windows Azure service.
The Microsoft Endpoint Protection was released as an extension of the Windows Azure SDK, delivering the antimalware import for providing protection configuration and deployment capabilities.
To enable the antimalware protection on Windows Azure VMs, customers will simply have to import the MEP antimalware module into the roles' definition.
It requires Windows Azure SDK 1.6 or newer, and is compatible with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2.
Some of the main features that it can deliver include:
- Real-time protection monitors activity on the system to detect and block malware from executing.
- Scheduled scanning periodically performs targeted scanning to detect malware on the system, including actively running malicious programs.
- Malware remediation takes action on detected malware resources, such as deleting or quarantining malicious files and cleaning up malicious registry entries.
- Signature updates installs the latest protection signatures (aka “virus definitions”) to ensure protection is up-to-date.
- Active protection reports metadata about detected threats and suspicious resources to Microsoft to ensure rapid response to the evolving threat landscape, as well as enabling real-time signature delivery through the Dynamic Signature Service (DSS).
The solution has been designed to run in the background and does not require human intervention. When malware is detected, the endpoint protection agent will take action to remove it automatically.
According to Microsoft, the new technology preview version of Microsoft Endpoint Protection for Windows Azure was made available so that customers can test it and offer feedback on the experience they receive from it.
You can learn more info on how the new tool was designed to work through this blog post on MSDN. Microsoft Endpoint Protection for Windows Azure CTP is available for download from Softpedia as well, via this link.