Microsoft to reveals latest security software

By Dave Nixon

Microsoft is to disclose its latest security software at next week’s RSA conference in San Francisco.

Over the past few months, Microsoft has revealed the software to a select group of users, but sources familiar with the company’s strategy said that it will release a beta version of the code to users during the conference. Microsoft will let attendees “see new technologies,” including Stirling and the company’s next-generation Windows Server 2008 software, according to the conference agenda.

Microsoft’s Forefront product suite has been vying with more reputable security products over the past few years, but with Stirling the company will at last be able to present administrators with a single product that manages all of its security offerings.

Ronald Beekelaar, an independent IT consultant based in Amsterdam, who is familiar with the Forefront products stated “Stirling will touch many different areas of network protection, server protection and client protection. So Microsoft has to coordinate that between different products. But that also means that beta testers should really look at Stirling at all those levels, and not just test the client protection, or only the firewall protection,” he said.

Stirling’s management and reporting capabilities, and its firm integration with Microsoft’s other products will present enterprise users new tools for tracking malware and staying on top of the “health” of the computers on their network, he added.

After running the product through beta testing phase, Microsoft expects to ship Stirling by the end of June 2009.