Forefront Security for SharePoint Release Notes - Beta 2

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[This topic is pre-release documentation and is subject to change in future releases. Blank topics are included as placeholders.]

Microsoft® Forefront™ Security for SharePoint®, Version 11.

(Build 243.0)

Thank you for using Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint (FSSP). This readme file contains important information regarding the current version of this product. It is highly recommended that you read the entire document.

To view the latest updated Readme.htm, see: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=108838.

What's in this file

This topic contains the following information:

  • Beta Issues
  • Important Notes
  • New Features
  • Software Fixes
  • Known Issues
  • Documentation
  • Frequently Asked Questions

Beta Issues

There are certain known issues with this beta release:

  • You cannot connect to another Forefront server (that is, there is no remote handling).
  • It might take up to 15 seconds for changes that you save in the Forefront Server Security Administrator to take effect**.**
  • The profanity example lists provided in former versions of the product are not supported in this beta release.
  • Microsoft Office Excel 2007 files with an .xlsb extension (Excel binary workbook files) cannot be filtered by keyword filtering. These files are correctly scanned by antivirus scans.
  • The user interface does not display user names and passwords for Universal Naming Convention (UNC) paths and proxy settings. Therefore, be aware that these fields may have been set and may have values, even though nothing appears in them.
  • E-mail notifications for "critical error" events are not being sent properly in this Beta release. In order to help you monitor these events, if a critical error is encountered, an error will be sent to the Windows Event Log.

Important Notes

  1. This beta release of FSSP is only supported on English, German, and Japanese operating systems.

  2. Upgrades from the beta 1 release of FSSP, as well as releases earlier than 11.0 are not supported.

  3. .NET 3.0 SP1 is required to install Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint.

  4. FSSP only supports five antivirus scan engines: Microsoft, Norman, CA, VirusBuster, and Kaspersky. After a fresh installation, all are selected for scanning. After the product has been installed, you can use the Forefront Server Security Administrator to change the engine selection.

    Note

    The following engines are no longer supported and should not be used: Sophos, Authentium, and AhnLab.

  5. After a fresh installation, new definition files must be downloaded in order to ensure the most up-to-date protection. An hourly update for each licensed engine is scheduled. These updates start five minutes after FSSP services are started. However, if a proxy is being used for updates, these scheduled updates will fail until all the proxy information has been entered. Use the Forefront Server Security Administrator to enter a proxy username and a password. Under Global Settings, in Engine Updates, enter the appropriate information into Proxy Username and Proxy Password (the Proxy Server Name and Proxy Port should have been entered during installation; if not, you can enter them here also). Then, immediately update each scan engine by clicking Update Engines Now.
    Note   

    • You should successfully update at least one engine before the installation is considered complete.
    • Until all the licensed engines have been successfully downloaded, errors may appear in the event log. These errors include "Could not create mapper object".

  6. The Forefront Server Security Administrator cannot be used to manage servers running the beta 1 release of FSSP, as well as releases earlier than 11.0.

  7. If the SharePoint Portal Alert service is on the server and running, an upgrade or removal of Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint might require a reboot.

  8. Files compressed into multipart RAR volumes are subject to the uncompressed file size limit. This limit is specified in Protection Settings, on the Global Settings - Advanced Options work pane, in the Maximum uncompressed file size setting. The default value of this limit is 100 megabytes. If any file exceeds the limit, any multipart RAR volume that contains the file or a part of the file is blocked or deleted. You can also set its value by using PowerShell. (For example: Set-FSSPAdvancedOptions ‒UnCompressedFileSize 150).

  9. To prevent FSSP from requiring a restart during an upgrade or uninstall process, shut down the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (OpsMgr) 2007 for FSSP agent (or any other monitoring software) and make sure that any command prompts or Windows Explorer windows do not have the FSSP program folder or any of the subfolders open. After the upgrade or uninstall process is complete, start the OpsMgr agent again.

  10. FSSP does not support customers using their own procedure in order to download engine updates from the Microsoft Web sites. FSSP provides the ability for a server to be used as a redistribution server, but this server must use FSSP to get the updates from Microsoft.

  11. FSSP database path names (DatabasePath registry key) have a maximum size of 216 characters.

  12. If you change the program folder, its name must be less than 170 characters.

  13. UNC paths specified for engine updates must not end with a backslash (\).

  14. Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint is not supported on a server that has both Microsoft Exchange Server and SharePoint installed.

  15. Single-node management of Forefront Security for SharePoint is available via the Forefront Server Security Administrator.

  16. If the password is changed on the account that was entered for SharePoint database access, the password must be changed on the Microsoft Forefront Server Security Controller for SharePoint service by using the Service Control Manager.

  17. In the "Forefront Security for SharePoint User Guide", where stopping and starting SharePoint services is discussed, the term "SharePoint services" includes the World Wide Web Publishing service.

  18. The following are the default locations of the program directory, the data directory, and the engines directory:

    • Windows Vista® (x64) and Windows Server 2008 (x64):
      Program directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint
      Data directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint\Data
      Engines directory: C:\ Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint\Data\Engines
    • Windows Vista (x86):
      Program directory: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint
      Data directory: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint\Data
      Engines directory: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint\Data\Engines
    • Windows Server 2003 (x64):
      Program directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint
      Data directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint\Data
      Engines directory: C:\ Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint\Data\Engines
    • Windows Server 2003 (x86):
      Program directory: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint
      Data directory: Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint\Data
      Engines directory: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint\Data\Engines

  19. The Forefront Security for SharePoint Notification Web Parts feature is not supported in this release.

  20. You should not open multiple Forefront Server Security Administrator sessions on a single server, even if they are opened in different logon sessions.

  21. There are a number of settings and situations that require you to recycle services. In the event that FSSP does not recognize the current settings, recycle the FSSP services.

  22. The Microsoft Forefront Server Security Controller Service is dependent on the Windows NT® Schedule service. The Schedule service must have the ability to start successfully in order for FSSP to initialize.

  23. Although it appears that the primary update path can be set independently for each engine, there is really only a single setting. That is, if you modify one engine's primary update path, you are actually modifying the primary update path for all engines. The same is true for the secondary update path.

New Features

Build 11.0.243.0:

  1. Added support for PowerShell, the Windows command line shell that can be used to enter commands directly or to create scripts.
  2. Product installation is now done with the Windows Installer (MSI).
  3. The user interface has been revised.
  4. Spyware can now be detected with the Microsoft Antimalware Engine in the realtime scan.
  5. Multi-node FSSP management is supported via the "Stirling" console.
  6. Administrators can now customize e-mail notifications to be sent for events such as a detected virus or an engine update failure.
  7. An on-demand scan has been added in order to scan the SharePoint database on an on-demand basis.
  8. You can choose the SharePoint sites to scan with the scheduled and on-demand scans.
  9. FSSP can be run on the Hyper-V platform.

Software Fixes

Build 11.0.243.0 includes all software fixes from FSSP 10.1.0746.0.

Known Issues

  1. A valid ZIP archive is detected as corrupted compressed.
    Reason: FSSP currently does not support the PKWARE's DCL-Implode or Deflate64 algorithms.
    Workaround: None.
  2. Forefront services may still exist if the Service Control Manager is open during uninstall.
    Reason: FSSP services may only get marked for deletion instead of actually being deleted if the Service Control Manager application is open.
    Workaround: Closing the Service Control Manager application or restarting the server allows the FSSP services to be deleted.
  3. Upgrade may fail if the Service Control Manager is open.
    Reason: FSSP services may only get marked for deletion instead of actually being deleted if the Service Control Manager application is open.
    Workaround: Closing the Service Control Manager application or restarting the server allows the FSSP services to be deleted.
  4. During the installation, choosing a directory from the list of existing folders when you are prompted by the Select Program Folder dialog box for a program folder, only replaces the current shortcuts in the selected folder with the shortcuts for FSSP. (The original programs themselves will remain untouched; only the links to them in that program folder are overwritten.)
    Workaround: Either accept the default or enter the name of a totally new folder.
  5. FSSP will not properly scan for viruses if installed to a folder with non-ASCII characters.
    Workaround: Choose a path that contains only characters from the following groups: letters (A-Z, a-z), numbers (0-9), or the symbols :\/!#$%'()+,-.;=@[]^_`{}~.
  6. In PowerShell, in the incident and quarantine records, time is displayed as Universal Time Coordinate (UTC), which might differ from local time.
  7. The FilesScanned and FilePartsScanned malware and filter statistics are not reset when you use the Clear-FSSPReport PowerShell cmdlet.
    Workaround: None.

Documentation

The documentation for this product is distributed in .chm format and is provided with this package. After installation, access help either from the Forefront Server Security Administrator interface or use the F1 key when running the Forefront Server Security Administrator.

Frequently Asked Questions

Regularly updated lists of frequently asked questions are available on Microsoft's Web site (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=78562):

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