Firms still leery of SP2
p2pnet.net News:- With seriously negative reports clouding Microsoft’s vaunted (by Microsoft) XP Service Pack 2 auto-release, one company is hoping to find a silver lining.
Canada’s AssetMetrix of Ottawa found only 24% of 251 businesses in the US and Canada running Windows XP were thinking of updating to SP2.
But, “we’ve developed a software solution for dealing with the SP2 upgrade facing most companies,” promises Gravity Storm Software’s Larry Brown.
The company has released the latest version of its Service Pack Manager (SPM) v7.0 which now includes functionality to manage the Windows firewalls on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 network machines.
“Microsoft has included Windows Firewall with the new versions of Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2003 SP1,” says Brown. “By default, it’s configured with most ports closed. This configuration creates problems for IT professionals who need not only to remotely manage these machines, but also make them capable to provide a variety of services to the enterprise LAN.”
He says with the latest SPM, IT pros can automatically detect and scan all the machines on the network running Windows Firewall to determine if they’re in compliance with user-defined Windows Firewall policy.
“The compliancy checks are performed at the level of allowed/blocked ports and programs and are indicated in the scan results,” says Brown. “The Windows Firewall policy can be distributed throughout the enterprise with a click of the mouse.”
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See:-
clouding – MS dismisses SP2 blow, p2pnet, April 5, 2005
Gravity Storm Software - Service Pack Manager 7.0 incorporates enterprise-wide Windows Firewall Management capabilities, April 5, 2005
April 6th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
Note that Windwows Server 2003 SP1 builds this ability into the server operating system through group policies.