Last Thursday Microsoft unveiled its new strategy for enterprise security, called Business Ready  Security. The new strategy follows Microsoft's integration of security and identity in one division. Integration of security and identity is now also shown in the extension of the Forefront label into the identity management products. The next version of Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM) is now rebranded to  Forefront Identity Lifecycle Manager. JG Chirapurath, director of Microsoft's identity and security business group said that from now on all Microsoft's directory and security management products outside of Windows will be released under the Forefront label.

In the same announcement Microsoft also unveiled Beta 2 of the Stirling security suite. The suite includes several client, server and application security products, including Forefront Threat Management Gateway (formerly ISA Server), Forefront Client Security, Forefront Security for Exchange Server and Forefront Security for SharePoint, under a common management console.

Beta 2 of Stirling also includes Security Assessment Sharing (SAS), which gathers events from third-party products under the Forefront management console. Microsoft said  it is fully aware that is  not able to solve the security challenge by itself and that 10 partners will announce integration with SAS, including Juniper,  TippingPoint, Brocade,  RSA Security, Kaspersky, StillSecure, Imperva,  Q1 Labs, Sourcefire and Guardium.

On Thursday Microsoft also announced it's first security software as a service offering: Forefront Online Security for Exchange. This is the first in a line of SaaS announcements coming out of the Forefront suite. Just like its non-cloud version Forefront Online Security for Exchange  will filter messages using multiple scanning engines for virus and spam detection. While virus and spam detection runs in the cloud, User identities can remain on-premises inside Active Directory in an organization's Exchange boxes.

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