Forefront Security Products at Microsoft gain Customer Trust
Today’s security market landscape is complex and fragmented. Poor interoperability, separate management consoles for each product, and a general lack of unified event reporting and analysis all present challenges to the system administrator. In short, network protection is still too difficult to deploy, use, and manage, and it is expensive, as well. The deficiencies are especially problematic as security becomes an increasingly critical enabler for business solutions.
The Microsoft Forefront family of business security products helps provide greater protection and control over the security of your network infrastructure. Microsoft Forefront’s products easily integrate with each other, with your organization’s IT infrastructure, and can be supplemented through interoperable third-party solutions, enabling end-to-end, defense-in-depth security solutions. Simplified management, reporting, analysis, and deployment enable you to more efficiently protect your organization’s information resources and secure access to applications and servers. With highly responsive protection supported by Microsoft technical guidance, Microsoft Forefront helps you confidently meet ever-changing threats and increased business demands.
Forefront is a key component of Microsoft’s strategy for providing end-to-end security for business customers. This vision begins at the operating system. With the release of Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1, vulnerabilities have been greatly reduced, and the upcoming releases of Windows Vista and Windows “Longhorn” Server are centered around robust security. Forefront security products augment the security of these operating systems by providing additional layers of security designed to protect information and control access to business-critical resources and information. The security of this information is further enhanced through robust digital rights management, ensuring that document-specific security and policy compliance is assured even if those documents get into unauthorized hands.
Microsoft’s security products are tied together through a powerful identity management infrastructure that provides fine levels of granularity and control. This control is further enabled by a broad set of management and reporting capabilities that offer robust event collection, analysis, and reporting, as well as the tools to create and enforce security best practices. Finally, Microsoft offers a wide array of technical and industry-specific guidance to help businesses configure their security products correctly and effectively.
Paul Bryans, Director of Product Management,
Forefront Security Products at Microsoft Corporation
Paul Bryan is a Director in Microsoft’s Security Products group. In his current role, he is responsible for marketing Microsoft’s Forefront line of security products for business customers. Paul has been at Microsoft since 1998 and has held a number of positions focused on marketing, strategy, product planning, and business development.
Before joining Microsoft, Paul was a consultant for Andersen Strategic Services where he focused on developing business strategies for Fortune 500 clients. Prior to that, Paul held engineering positions at PepsiCo and Frito-Lay. Paul holds an MBA from the Wharton Business School and a BS in Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology, where he graduated with highest honors.
In the following interview, Paul Bryans, Director of Product Management, for Forefront Security Products at Microsoft Corp., discusses with Rake Narang, Chief Editor of Info Security Products Guide, common security problems customers are facing today and the importance of solutions that integrate well with existing infrastructure ensuring easier deployment and management.
Rake Narang, Chief Editor - Info Security Products Guide:Microsoft's security product has won the 2007 Global Product Excellence Award in Enterprise Firewall and on behalf of the Info Security Products Guide editorial team, I would like to congratulate you and everyone at Microsoft for this achievement. What makes Microsoft security products unique and how does your product management team ensure that the products meet the needs of most users? Paul Bryan, Group Product Manager, Security and Access,Microsoft Corp.: Microsoft’s Forefront line of security and secure access products are solutions that are designed to meet the needs of busy IT departments by being Comprehensive, Integrated, and Simplified. Our comprehensive array of products provides layered defenses across client, server and network. Our products are designed to integrate with existing infrastructure (Active Directory, Group Policy, Management technologies (MOM, WSUS, SMS) and integrate with protected applications—e.g., Exchange, Sharepoint) to provide best protection for the Microsoft platform and applications. Our products are also simple to configure and manage which reduces administration time reduces the risk of mis-configuration, providing more time in the administrator’s busy schedule as well as additional peace of mind.
"Forefront Security for Exchange Server integrates with Exchange Server2007 to provide advanced protection, optimized performance, and centralized management so that customers can more easily deploy, manage and maintain a secure messaging environment. The solution incorporates 8 different scan engines, from leading security providers, in one solution to provide layered protection against viruses, worms and Spam."
Matt Tams, Product Manager, Microsoft Corp.
Rake Narang:What are the common problems that users (security) face today? Are most users under secured or over secured when it comes to protecting their digital resources? Paul Bryan : One very common problem that customers are facing today is the increasingly complex task of deploying and managing security across their IT environments. Customers have told us that in order to secure their environments today, they typically have to deploy several point products that don’t interoperate very well. These products typically have multiple management consoles and multiple security agents that must be installed and maintained. All of this increases the overall cost of security solutions and increases the amount of time that administrators have to spend analyzing information to determine if their businesses are still secure. I think most enterprise IT departments have enough security technology, but many small business do not or lack the staff to properly implement it. That’s why we’ve designed products that specifically cater to busy IT staff that provides comprehensive protection that integrates with existing infrastructure while being easy to deploy and manage.
Rake Narang:Has the security industry to a great extent been able to curb the security threats that would have otherwise devastated the world wide web or even most critical networks? What are Microsoft’s plans to make the digital world more secured? Paul Bryan : I think the security industry has made tremendous progress in this regard, but much work remains to be done. There is a growing diversity and sophistication in the threats businesses are facing. In today’s security environment, attacks are more advanced and often profit motivated. They happen more frequently and spread more quickly, with less time for administrators to mitigate them. In addition to delivering comprehensive product offerings to help customers address security challenges, Microsoft’s leading-edge security research team is working to thwart this next generation of online threats.
"Security products have continued to evolve rapidly in the past few years and advanced technologies are now making it possible to take a pro-active approach to most security scenarios. End-users or consumers of these products have to deal with real-live threats which may differ vastly from lab simulated environments. These users build a strong ‘Customer Trust’ for products that best meet their requirements and therefore also play a key role in the security evolution cycle."
Rake Narang , Chief Editor - Info Security Products Guide
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-7329 USA
Tel: (425) 882-8080 www.microsoft.com
