Features

“Stirling” protection technologies share information about the security state of assets in an organization.  This information spans the IT environment: from endpoints, to messaging and collaboration servers, to network edge security.  Based on the severity of the information, the system dynamically responds to protect the organization at multiple layers of the IT environment.  “Stirling” helps IT to save time and effort while proactively securing the environment.

“Stirling” breaks the siloed approach to enterprise security by integrating comprehensive, next-generation protection technologies across the IT environment:  anti-malware, host firewall, anti-spam, content filtering, multi-engine protection for messaging and collaboration systems, network edge protection, and others.

By bringing together signature, heuristic, behavioral, and reputation-based techniques from multiple vendors into a single solution, “Stirling” provides world-class, coordinated protection against complex threats.

In addition to a central management console for security configuration and enterprise-wide visibility, “Stirling”  includes:

The next-generation Forefront Client Security
The next-generation Forefront Security for Exchange Server
The next-generation Forefront Security for Sharepoint
The next-generation Internet Security & Acceleration Server, to be renamed Forefront Threat Management Gateway

“Stirling” includes a single management console for all your security needs.  In one location, IT professionals can conduct all administrative functions for security across endpoint, messaging and collaboration servers, and network edge: from configuration and signature updates to reporting and alerting.  With role-based administration, different IT professionals can manage their respective part of the security infrastructure from the same console. "Stirling" provides a single location to manage security, enabling IT professionals to save time and resources.

Unlike the traditional approach to security management that focuses on configuring security products and technologies, “Stirling” defines and manages security policies based on what is important to protect:  asset groups of machines and users. This focused approach to policy management makes it much easier to configure settings and also reduces the risk of mis-configurations.

“Stirling” is designed to integrate and work with the Microsoft infrastructure. It is built on System Center Operations Manager 2007 and SQL Server.  Signature and agent deployment is optimized to work with Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). “Stirling” can also use existing groups in Active Directory to deploy policies. Through tight integration with Network Access Protection (NAP), “Stirling” ensures that only endpoints that comply with your IT security policy can access the network.  By getting more value out of the existing infrastructure, “Stirling” reduces complexity and simplifies security management.

“Stirling” provides real-time information on the security state of the IT environment in one dashboard.  “Stirling” aggregates threats and vulnerability data across layers and enables real-time reporting and analysis. In the dashboard, IT professionals can easily get a quick snapshot of the security state of their environment and understand whether or not the IT environment is secure.

“Stirling” helps prioritize efforts and focus on what’s most important now. IT professionals can select and customize the dashboard for their specific needs. The dashboard provides historical and trending information that helps spot emerging trends and helps IT professionals better understand how the environment is doing over time.

The dashboard in “Stirling” is hyperlinked to connect directly to critical information and to remediation. The security dashboard is a key launch point for other reports, allowing IT professionals to investigate and drill down into security issues as much as needed. With only a few clicks from a report, IT professionals can also remediate security issues, providing better control over the IT environment.