14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is right on track to release Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) 2010 to manufacturing by the end of this year. But while the company is working to wrap up FEP 2010, customers can already play with a near final release of the security solution.
At TechEd 2010 Europe, Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President, Management & Security Division announced the immediate availability for download of the Release Candidate (RC) for Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010.
This means that customers currently running System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 or R3, can download the RC bits and start testing the solution.
In fact, FEP 2010 was built on top of Configuration Manager 2007 R2. IT administrators will be able to take advantage of the new solution in order to manage health and protection of user systems running Windows XP, Windows Sever 2003 and also more recent releases of Windows client and server.
Management can be done through a single unified console, according to the Redmond company.
Additional benefits include:
“- One server infrastructure to maintain; - A single mechanism to deploy software and updates to clients;
- Central policy implementation for security and management;
- A single solution that desktop administrators need to be trained on, regardless of role;
- As an added plus, FEP will even detect and remove the most common client AntiMalware agents currently residing on your current systems to streamline deployment,” a member of the System Center team revealed.
Microsoft is emphasizing the fact that FEP 2010 takes security to an entirely new level in conjunction with Configuration Manager.
In this regard, the software giant is enabling customers to not only make sure that antimalware technologies are in place, but that the various Microsoft software in the infrastructure is up to date, offering additional protection simply because vulnerabilities are patched.
With FEP 2010 RTM and Configuration Manager 2007, IT admins can not only identify systems that are at risk in their infrastructure, but also deploy patches, make sure that malware outbreaks are stopped, but also clean-up infected machines.
This is of course possible from the single console that Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 offers customers.
Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) 2010 Release Candidate (RC) is available for download here.