19 07, 2010

Why there is so much anonymous traffic in Microsoft TMG and ISA logs

By | 2010-07-19T03:18:29+00:00 July 19th, 2010|Aliases, Firewall Analysis, How To, Log File Analysis, Microsoft ISA Server, Microsoft Threat Management Gateway, Reports, Tips and Best Practices, Uncategorized, Vantage, Web Browsing Analysis, WebSpy|5 Comments

One of the most common questions we get asked by users of Microsoft TMG and ISA is why there is so much traffic attributed to the Anonymous user. Even though unauthenticated access to the web has been disabled, they still see the ‘Anonymous’ user as one of the top users in their reports. So let’s [...]

12 07, 2010

Website Categorization – Assessing Productivity

By | 2010-07-12T07:46:02+00:00 July 12th, 2010|How To, Uncategorized|0 Comments

Security and Threat Management solutions, such as Microsoft Forefront TMG, IronPort and Blue Coat, use predefined URL categorization to simplify blocking and filtering management. Different security vendors have different ways of categorizing websites but it generally involves referring to a gigantic, regularly updated database of millions of websites sorted into 50-100 relevant categories. Majority of [...]

11 06, 2010

Accessing Microsoft Forefront TMG's Log Files (SQL Express)

By | 2010-06-11T06:54:59+00:00 June 11th, 2010|Firewall Analysis, How To, Loaders, Log File Analysis, Microsoft Threat Management Gateway, Uncategorized, Vantage, Web Browsing Analysis, WebSpy|1 Comment

If you need to analyze and report on Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway log files, the most common stumbling block is enabling access to the default SQL Express databases that contains the firewall and web proxy log files. The log databases are stored in an SQL Express instance named MSFW. By default these databases cannot [...]

20 05, 2010

Vantage Update 2.2.0.43

By | 2010-05-20T06:45:45+00:00 May 20th, 2010|IronPort, Loaders, Log File Analysis, Microsoft ISA Server, Microsoft Threat Management Gateway, Software Updates, Tips and Best Practices, Uncategorized, Vantage, Web Module, WebSpy|0 Comments

We've just released an auto update for WebSpy Vantage (Premium, Giga and Ultimate) as well as the Web Module. This is a great update for Vantage Ultimate users as we've introduced a new feature/tab into the Web Module called 'Dynamic Reports'. Here's the full list of changes since the last auto update (2.2.0.32 on the 14th April 2010).

12 05, 2010

Dedicated WebSpy and Forefront TMG pages – Everything you need to know about TMG Log Reporting

By | 2010-05-12T04:14:53+00:00 May 12th, 2010|How To, Microsoft Threat Management Gateway, Reports, Sales and Marketing, Tips and Best Practices, Uncategorized, WebSpy|0 Comments

Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) popularity is starting to pick up. WebSpy added support for analyzing and reporting on TMG logs even before the public release and have been improving our compatibility ever since. […]

2 03, 2010

Vantage Update 2.2.0.27 – Fix for Microsoft FTMG SQL Import

By | 2010-03-02T15:58:13+00:00 March 2nd, 2010|Loaders, Log File Analysis, Microsoft ISA Server, Microsoft Threat Management Gateway, Software Updates, Uncategorized, Vantage, Web Module, WebSpy|0 Comments

Our support for Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway is quite new and we’ve just fixed a couple of issues that we haven’t yet released as a public update yet. In particular, this update fixes the "specified cast invalid error" that occurs when importing the Web Proxy database logs.

8 02, 2010

8 Reasons NOT to Use Microsoft Forefront TMG's Reporting

By | 2010-02-08T06:48:39+00:00 February 8th, 2010|Aliases, Firewall Analysis, How To, Loaders, Log File Analysis, Microsoft ISA Server, Microsoft Threat Management Gateway, Reports, Tips and Best Practices, Uncategorized, Vantage, Web Browsing Analysis, Web Module, WebSpy|6 Comments

I've been having a look through the reporting functionality included in Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway to find that not much has changed from ISA Server 2006. There is some new information regarding the newly implemented URL categorization and threat management technology, but there is very little flexibility or customization for those with reporting requirements beyond general overviews cluttered with irrelevant information. Here is what I consider to be the 8 main limitations of Microsoft Forefront TMG's reporting functionality.