Microsoft Updates Edge Security Products

Published: September 12, 2007

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft this week released updates for two of its Forefront edge security products. The Supportability Update for its Internet Security & Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006 will deliver better logging and analysis functionality, while Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG) 2007 service pack 1 (SP1) gains support for Windows Vista and better performance, among other features.

ISA Server 2006 provides core firewall and virtual private networking (VPN) capabilities while also boosting the performance of secure Web sites running on Microsoft's IIS Web server. The product, which shipped 15 months ago, delivered better support for Exchange Server and better integration with Active Directory, among other enhancements.

With this week's delivery of the ISA Server 2006 Supportability Update, Microsoft is aiming to ease the logging and troubleshooting functions of the standard and enterprise editions of the products. According to Microsoft, the update brings a new troubleshooting node to the main ISA Server console, integration with the ISA Server "best practices analyzer" tool, enhanced log viewing and filtering functionality, and 200 new diagnostic logging events.

Meanwhile, Microsoft also announced a new release of IAG 2007, a version of ISA Server 2006 that's pre-loaded onto appliances, which Microsoft first released in February; hardware for the appliances are provided by Microsoft's partners.

With IAG 2007 SP1, Microsoft is delivering support for several new products, including Windows Vista and Windows Mobile 5.0 (for Exchange ActiveSync push e-mail, Microsoft says). It also brings support for Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), which delivers enhanced authentication and single sign-on (SSO) capabilities, and support for Kerberos Constrained Delegation (KCD), which boosts authentication and SSO. Lastly, SP1 delivers better performance--up to 600 percent faster for certain HTTP workloads--and support for the latest 2U hardware.

For more information on ISA Server 2006 and IAG 2007 or for free 180-day trials, visit www.microsoft.com/forefront/edgesecurity/default.mspx.

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