Andrew Plue - Microsoft System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection Cookbook

Andrew Plue is a Senior Consultant in the Secure Infrastructure Management group at Certified Security Solutions (CSS). He is veteran of the United States Army, and served as a paratrooper with the 1/508th Airborne Combat Team.

He has 18 years of experience in information security, with a focus on vulnerability detection, and corporate anti-virus solutions. During his tenure at CSS, he has acted as a lead engineer on numerous deployments of the Forefront Suite of anti-malware products, with production deployments of Forefront Client Security as large as 140,000 seats.

He has spoken at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference on the topic of Forefront Client Security.

In his spare time, he does not do all that much, to be honest.

I would like to thank Norah, for inspiring to do more with my life. James and Linda, my parents, for not giving up on me (I was a bad kid). Nicholas, Natalie, Emily, and Jamenson for giving me hope for the future and Maximus, Purrrsy, Melonball, and Machka for keeping my feet warm and my house rodent free.

Nicolai Henriksen is working as a Chief Infrastructure Consultant, and has been in the consulting business since 1995 implementing mostly Microsoft systems, but also a wide range of other vendors and products. He has always had a great interest and skills within managing and securing systems, servers, and clients. He has wide experience with most of the malware protection products in the market today. He is also a Microsoft Speaker and has performed several presentations with great demos at Microsoft events and international conferences. He got awarded as an MVP Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager in 2012.

Matthew Hudson has been involved in technology since the early days with the TRS-80 Model III. He has over 20 years of experience in the systems management area, consulting, and programming. Matthew received the Microsoft MVP award in 2009 for his expertise, community involvement, and drive to push the SMS 2003 product beyond the norm. This is his fourth year as an MVP in System Center Configuration Manager. He holds an undergraduate degree in Engineering from Texas A & M University and a Masters degree in Computer Science from Prairie View A & M University.

Stephan Wibier is a consultant and all-around IT geek specializing in Microsoft Backend Services. He has specialized in OS Deployment using tools, such as WDS/MDT and SCCM 2007/2012.

His interest in the IT business goes way back to the early 80s, starting with the good-old Commodore 64. After that, it was only a matter of time before the virus hit hard. He is certified in several areas of Microsoft products and still keeps up with the new and fabulous changes in the modern IT market.

He is known for his pragmatic style, approaching problems as changes or opportunities.

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Preface

System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection (SCEP) is Microsoft's third-generation corporate anti-malware solution. At the core, it shares many similarities with their "free for home use" anti-malware product, Microsoft Security Essentials, which has been installed on over 50 million PCs the world over.

The explosion in popularity of the Microsoft Security Essentials benefits SCEP users through the malware telemetry data of 50 million users of the Microsoft Security Essentials that share with Microsoft through their MAPS (formerly known as Spynet) program. By integrating SCEP with the newly-released System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, they have created one of the easiest solutions to deploy and manage anti-malware products on the market.

In this book, you will see System Center 2012 Configuration Manager referred to as simply SCCM. Although Microsoft often refers to it as ConfigMgr in their documentation, the majority of the people the author has worked with over the years refer to the product as SCCM. System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection will be referred to as SCEP, although this is not an official acronym that Microsoft uses for the product.