Security Products

Major changes to the Forefront line of antimalware products were announced in Sept. 2012. Many Forefront products (not shown) have been discontinued as of Dec. 1, 2012, including 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). Support, including antimalware signature updates, will be provided for the discontinued products until Dec. 31, 2015. The Protection Server Management Console 2010 was also discontinued.

Future updates to Endpoint Protection for protecting Windows clients will be tied to Configuration Manager. The product dropped the Forefront brand to become part of System Center 2012. Administrators are required to use the Configuration Manager console for central management of Endpoint Protection security updates and policies. Endpoint Protection was updated to 2012 SP1 at the same time as the other System Center products.