Security & Management

Systems Management Server 2003 R2 Open Beta

SMS 2003 R2 contains new features/capabilities in two areas – Vulnerability Assessment and Software Updates.

SMS Scan Tool for Vulnerability assessment.

SMS 2003 R2 leverages the vulnerability assessment technology and knowledge in MBSA 2.0.  SMS 2004 R2 leverages the SMS infrastructure to deploy the MBSA 2.0 VA scanner, scans the system and report scan results across the enterprise.  SMS customers can now get a global view of the vulnerabilities and risks in their organization and drill down to very specific vulnerabilities.  For example, using SMS 2003 R2 customers will be able to get a global view of the # of desktops/servers that have accounts without passwords and then drill down and see every account on every desktop/server without defined passwords.  This same level of detail is present in SMS 2003 R2 for over 70 vulnerabilities including vulnerabilities for IIS, SQL, and Windows. 

Microsoft Inventory Tool for Custom updates.

Software updates (patching) is one of the most commonly used features of SMS 2003.  SMS 2003 is the leading software update solution for Enterprise organization.  One of the most common customer requests is to extend the SMS 2003 software updates capabilities to enable distribution/reporting of non-Microsoft packages and LOB software updates.  The SMS and Windows Update teams collaborated to define a common catalog schema that SMS 2003 R2 could leverage that would be common with Microsoft Update for patching of 3^rd party and LOB applications.  SMS 2003 R2 includes a scanner and catalog publishing tool that enables Microsoft’s ISV partners to build and ship software update catalogs that SMS natively consumes.  SMS 2003 R2 also enables customers to create software update catalogs – enabling SMS 2003 R2 to natively patch your internally developed applications.