Forefront Security Products

Major changes to the Forefront line of antimalware products were announced in Sept. 2012. Forefront Protection 2012 for Exchange Server, Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint, and Forefront Security for Office Communications Server (which had been extended to provide some protection for Lync Server 2010) will all be discontinued as of Dec. 1, 2012, although support, including antimalware signature updates, will be provided until Dec. 31, 2015. The Protection Server Management Console 2010 will also be discontinued.

Updates to Endpoint Protection will be tied to Configuration Manager. The product dropped the Forefront brand to become part of System Center 2012, which was released in Apr. 2012. Administrators are required to use the Configuration Manager console to centrally manage security updates and policies.

Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010, released in Nov. 2009, uses the Threat Management Gateway Web Protection Service, which accesses Microsoft Reputation Services (a cloud-based URL categorization service) to help protect users from browsing to malicious Web sites. A service pack was released in June 2010. TMG 2010 SP2, released in Oct. 2011, provides improved startup time and better authentication mechanisms in high-availability scenarios. The product will be discontinued as of Dec. 1, 2012, but support and updates to the Web Protection Service will be provided until Dec. 31, 2015.