Microsoft: Easing Exchange Security for Partners

TalkinCloud hears a lot about the opportunities for managed service providers to protect customer mailboxes from malware, spam, and regulatory compliance violations. And now Microsoft has updated their Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) cloud-based filtering and archiving tool to help partners do exactly that, thanks to enhanced administrative options. And that’s not all — FOPE now works in hybrid cloud environments.

According to Senior Director of  Exchange Product Management Julia White‘s blog entry on the FOPE 11.1 update, it’s enabling the protection service with additional flexibility when it comes to e-mail routing. That makes it possible to protect e-mails in a hybrid environment between on-premises Microsoft Exchange and Exchange Online — especially a plus since the latter is included in the upcoming Office 365.

Other new features include new TLS options for enhanced communication channel security and a “skiplisting” feature that can reduce false positive results for malware by establishing trusted business partners.

But the real highlight of this free Forefront Online Protection for Exchange update – for cloud service providers, at least — is the fact that a new delegated administration experience makes it easier for a remote Microsoft partner to manage a customer’s messaging security. And the partner in question gets a better view into all the organizations they manage, to boot.

Forefront isn’t the only hosted security and archiving solution for Microsoft Exchange. But it is the one that Microsoft themselves built. That alone could make it worth a look for MSPs managing legacy Exchange servers and cloud integrators eyeing an Office 365 business alike.

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