FAQ: Microsoft's Forefront server security family

Computerworld - Microsoft Corp. bought Sybari Software Inc. in June 2005, and with that acquisition came the Antigen line of products. The company has since rebranded the Antigen line with the Forefront name, improved the products’ performance and tuning under Windows, and integrated a suite of products under that umbrella.

Let’s take a look at the server side of the Forefront security suite and see what the particulars are.

What are the Forefront Server products?

Forefront is designed to integrate, at least initially, with two of Microsoft’s most popular server products -- Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Forefront Security for Exchange Server and Forefront Security for SharePoint search for viruses, spyware and other malware and eliminate them before they reache the client. That is the major differentiator between the server and client components in the Forefront suite. Stopping malware at the server level is always preferable to leaving defense at the client, where the user has a chance to, even accidentally, intercept and stop the security processes from working.

What are the specifics about Forefront for Exchange Server?

Forefront Security for Exchange Server provides an interface and central operating area for up to five scanning engines -- not necessarily all of Microsoft’s own manufacture -- to scrub mail. Forefront allows administrators to define filters that examine attachments to mail and keywords within a message’s body. It also provides high-performance inspection through its multithreaded approach for busy mail servers. The use of multiple processors over just one and the ability for scanning to be done in multiple threads result in a performance boost over the old Antigen product line.

What about about Forefront for Sharepoint Server?

The SharePoint version also integrates multiple scanning engines and scans documents stored within a SharePoint repository for inappropriate information, profanity and malware through its integration with Antigen. (To date, Antigen remains a separate and supported product from Microsoft; more details are available here.) Perhaps the most interesting feature of Forefront SharePoint is the ability to define content policies, which protects not just from a security threat standpoint, but also from a content security standpoint. This is important in today’s regulatory environment.

What else about Forefront is important?

At the core of Forefront’s mission is integration across the entire line of products and services that are deployed in your infrastructure. Forefront ties into Microsoft's client and gateway security software. It also is designed to operate with Active Directory, Group Policy and Windows Server Update Services to distribute consistent security policies and timely, properly applie