One of the features of Configuration Manager that has had a big improvement in the System Center 2012 release is endpoint protection. In Configuration Manager 2007, we used Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) 2010. The integration to Configuration Manager was not the cleanest and was known for being quite a headache to manage.
Roll forward to Configuration Manager 2012, and System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection (SCEP) is a massive improvement in this space. In this chapter, we will look at SCEP 2012 in greater detail from an infrastructure perspective right through to updates and responding to threats. The topics we will cover in this chapter are as follows:
Configuring the endpoint protection infrastructure
Creating endpoint protection policies
Deploying endpoint protection definition updates
Deploying endpoint protection agents
Controlling the Windows Firewall
Responding to threats