Microsoft has launched a range of Forefront security products in its efforts to ensure the security and identity offerings of the giant together. Two new solutions are now known – Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) and Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG), which makes the meat of Microsoft (and Forefront’s) access and Web security services.

TMG was launched in late 2009, but not UAG will be available later in 2010.

Forefront seeks to offer a full range of security solutions ranging from clients, servers and network perimeter. As part of Microsoft Forefront family have a security advantage over the competition as they are designed to protect and integrate existing products from Microsoft.

A measure of how seriously Microsoft is pierced and dominate the security market is the integration of Active Directory (AD) of the Forefront line. Migration treatment projects in AD are still there in the market while large companies and many medium-sized enterprises have entered the transition, the problem for these customers is how secure infrastructure with AD now in situ. Microsoft Forefront believes that its range is a natural and logical for customers concerned about security AD.

TMG and UAG are layered defense provides full access and control, and Microsoft also plan to offer solutions on a software as a basic service (SaaS) one, which should lead to the first and the total cost For many customers, especially small and middle market companies.

TMG function is to protect users against malicious Web sites and control sites or categories of sites can be opened or blocked, for example, provide porn sites. In other words, the TMG function as a gateway to web access and also integrates with Microsoft’s Reputation Services, based on a cloud, the threat of data repository.

Reputation Services collects information from nearly 50 million domains that billions of Web pages. This database contains information collected and shared by the companies Microsoft, such as Hotmail, and others such as Bright Cloud. Integration of Reputation Services is one reason why there is much interest in TMG as customers already understand the nature and effectiveness of benefits from this database threats.

UAG expanding direct access (located in Windows 7) on non-Windows 7 clients, Direct Access is promoted by Microsoft as an alternative to VPN access, but so far is limited to Windows 7 with Windows Server 2008 R2 on the back end. This development means that XP and Vista, users can now use the solution while the server components for direct access will be implemented.

How good are these solutions as standalone products? They value highly because Microsoft is obviously a great effort and research on them and spend considerable sums to acquire technology (UAG is a technology acquired by Microsoft acquired Whale Communications).

With customers the option is not independent as the attraction has, however, it is a situation where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Forefront provides a viable, comprehensive and fully integrated Security Suite for customers looking to simplify and improve security in depth, while fully integrating the Windows environment, there is no real competition.