New Security Compliance Manager Beta Review Program in February 2010

Microsoft is gearing up to make available the first Beta review program for the new Security Compliance Manager. Specific details are not yet available from the Redmond company, but the promise is that the Beta program will be kicked off soon. Jeff Sigman, a programmer on the Microsoft Solution Accelerators – Security and Compliance Team, revealed that the Beta review program for new Security Compliance Manager is just around the corner, and invited customers interested to join the testing initiative via Microsoft Connect. According to Sigman, the Beta will be launched by the end of February 2010, and participants that sign up ahead of time will be notified by email.

“This new tool provides centralized management, a security settings database, customization capabilities, and export flexibility for security baselines, accelerating an organization's ability to efficiently manage the security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies,” Sigman explained.

With its various Solution Accelerators, Microsoft is attempting to provide customers with free resources designed to streamline the efforts of IT professionals related to the planning, integration, and operating of IT systems. The new Security Compliance Manager is just such a resource, delivering capabilities such as Centralized Management and Data Repository

“The centralized management console of the Security Compliance Manager provides you with a unified, end-to-end user experience to plan, customize, report, and export security baselines. The tool gives you full access to the complete database of recommended security settings for Windows client and server operating systems, and Microsoft applications,” Sigman added.

With the new Security Compliance Manager, Microsoft will also make it easier for customers to tailor the baseline to their needs. The software giant has built Security Baseline Customization into the solution, allowing customers to adapt baselines for Windows client and server platforms to the needs of their organization.

According to Sigman, the Security Compliance Manager also brings to the table “Security Baseline Comparison and Export - Security Compliance Manager enables you to quickly adopt the latest Microsoft product releases. [And] Security Baseline Compliance Monitoring and Verification - Keep current with the latest releases from Microsoft; automate your security baseline compliance process, and take advantage of baseline version control and automatic update features.”