Multiple Scanning Engines

A growing Forefront product line supports multiple antivirus engines from Microsoft and other vendors to increase the likelihood that emerging threats will be caught quickly—for example, some vendors emphasize viruses, others Trojans, and a variety of heuristic detection methods may better identify previously unknown viruses. Multiple engines also provide continuous protection: while one engine’s signature file is being updated, other engines continue to scan new content. The current and next generation of Forefront products will continue to offer multiple antimalware scanning engines from Microsoft and third parties. However, the number of available engines was reduced on Dec. 1, 2009.

Administrators can choose up to five engines and can configure Forefront to use them in various ways. Typically, different servers would be configured to use different subsets of the engines to provide maximum scanning coverage while maintaining server performance. Forefront products automatically retrieve updated signatures for all engines from Microsoft or an internal redistribution site and apply the latest updates to the scanning engines on all servers.