SCEP Server Policy Templates

One of the best features of Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) 2010 was its easy to use server policy templates. In a nutshell, server policy templates let you quickly choose an optimized, preconfigured FEP policy for every- just about every- type of application server that Microsoft produces (Exchange, SharePoint, SQL, etc). So instead of painstakingly going through option by option and creating a policy for a server, you could simply select a server type from a drop down list and create a policy in seconds.

At first glance it might seem that this feature has been removed from the next version of Microsoft’s Endpoint Protection solution, System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection (SCEP). Now it’s true that there is no drop down list of Microsoft server types to choose from, but the Server Policy templates have been carried over to SCEP. To use them simply navigate over to Assists and Compliance\Overview\Endpoint Protection\Anti-Malware Policies and click the import button at the top of the screen.

A window should pop up for a directory that contains XML based policy files for all the preconfigured server policies that were included with FEP. If for some reason the pop up window does not display a set of policies browse over to %\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Configuration Manager\AdminConsole\XmlStorage\EPTemplates , this is the default file location for the server policies. Note that in the RC version of SCCM 2012, the policy templates are pre-fixed with “FEP”, but rest assured they work just fine for SCEP as well.