Microsoft Unveils 'Stirling' Security Suite

Published: June 6, 2007

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft this week unveiled "Stirling," the codename for the next release of its Forefront suite of security tools. When it becomes available, Stirling will, for the first time, unite Microsoft's server, desktop, and network security offerings into a single product that users can access and control from a single management console.

Microsoft has made steady progress on the security front over the last year. Since June 2006, when Microsoft gathered all of its security products under the Forefront brand and launched its Forefront Client Security for desktop protection and Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006, the company has launched additional products including Forefront Security for Exchange Server and Forefront Security for SharePoint.

Now, Microsoft is moving forward with a strategy to unify all of its security products under a single suite that makes it easy for enterprise Windows customers to buy and consume. The key deliverable in that strategy is Stirling, which will include new versions of Forefront Client Security, Server Security, Edge Security, and Access products, and a single management console to control all of them.

In the PressPass Q&A announcing the new initiative, Microsoft's senior director of security product marketing, Margaret Arakawa, says Stirling will take Microsoft's approach to security "to the next level."

"Stirling will be the first in the market to integrate full-featured security and access technologies in a single product," Arakawa says. "With one management console, Stirling enables IT managers to centrally set policy, configure, deploy, and manage security within their IT environment. With Stirling, taking control of securing and managing an organization's IT infrastructure becomes easier and more cost-effective."

Microsoft says to expect the first private beta of Stirling later this year. This would seem to suggest a 2008 ship date, but Microsoft didn't say anything about when Stirling will become available.

Microsoft has already shaken up the desktop security market, which has been dominated by software vendors like Symantec, McAfee, and TrendMicro that feature antivirus (AV) and firewall protection at the center of their offerings. The introduction of less expensive alternatives from Microsoft, which now offers its own antivirus protection through its Forefront Client Security and others, has led to the commoditization of the market for desktop security products, according to IT analysts.

With margins effectively cut for desktop security product makers, now Microsoft appears to be looking to get its fingers around the enterprise security market, which is filled with vendors selling appliances that tackle security tasks, such as virtual private networking (VPN), network access control (NAC), and intrusion prevention systems (IPS). Other popular security capabilities that are attracting new users include anti-spam, anti-spyware, anti-phishing, URL filtering, rootkit detection, encryption, strong authentication, and integrated backup.

This is where the fight over the next five years will be, and Microsoft wants to define that fight with Stirling. "Customers have deployed a slew of different point products to help ward off the attacks," Arakawa says. As a result, administrators spend lots of time jumping between security consoles and different security policies. "Most of today's products don't enable the visibility needed to analyze and have a clear understanding of the security state of the organization," she says.

By contrast, Stirling will provide a unified solution that will make it easier for users to protect the organization from emerging threats, according to Microsoft. Hooks into the various security point products--not to mention Windows, Active Directory, Exchange Server, the System Center Suite, Network Access Protection, the version of NAC that is available with the combination of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008--will combine to make managing enterprise security with Stirling a breeze. Or so the theory goes, anyway.

Microsoft has already developed a lot of momentum in this space, and it will likely gain more from the Stirling announcement. The software behemoth touted its inclusion in the "leaders quadrant" of Gartner's recent "Magic Quadrant" rating system for e-mail security boundary products. It was also included as one of the leaders in Forrester's "Wave" rating for SSL VPN appliances. A recent study by the Enterprise Strategy Group found about 75 percent of people it surveyed were considering deploying Microsoft's desktop security tool, Forefront Client Security, or had plans to consider it in 2007. While the percentages will likely be a bit less for the as yet undelivered Stirling "all in one" security system, you can bet your weekly allowance that Microsoft will get its due mindshare for this product at some point, too.

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