News

Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 RC Now Available

• By Kurt Mackie
• 11/08/2010

Microsoft announced today that the release candidate version of its Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 security product is now available for download.

Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 is the successor product to Microsoft's Forefront Client Security product, part of a suite of enterprise security products offered by Microsoft. This release candidate version, which can be downloaded here, represents the last test version before Microsoft makes the product generally available. The product is expected "by the end of 2010," according to a Microsoft blog.

Microsoft emphasizes the benefits of combining Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 with either System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 or R3. (R3 was released last month.) By using the two products together, IT pros can perform patch management and check security information via the same management software, Microsoft contends.

Microsoft is also touting the "behavior detection" security capability of Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010. Another benefit is improved firewall management and a streamlined installation process, according to the blog.

Today's announcement was a small part of the company's overall news delivered at Tech-Ed Europe, an ongoing Microsoft educational event being held in Berlin. The big news there was Microsoft's Hyper-V Cloud initiative, a series of programs designed to facilitate the building of private clouds by organizations.

Another announcement coming from the event is a new white paper from Microsoft claiming power savings using System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3.

Finally, Microsoft touted some benefits from the new Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2, which was released late last month. SP1 offers power savings via its "dynamic memory" workload allocation management capability, Microsoft claims, plus users can obtain greater virtual desktop infrastructure densities using it. The other feature in SP1 is RemoteFX, which enables remote thin clients to run rich applications.