We often recommend customers using Microsoft ISA or TMG switch their logging to W3C text file, in order to get the best possible import speed, and also because the text logs are much easier to access from a remote machine (see my previous article on accessing TMG’s SQL Express Log database). Logging to the default [...]
Today I thought I’d cover some interesting hit information and explain how you can get more out of your data by ensuring your hits are accurately reported on. As the term ‘hit’ can sometimes be confusing, let’s start off by properly define hits. […]
If you’re using Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway, there is a bug in the logging that causes Bytes Sent and Bytes Received to be logged in reverse. This seems to only affect the Web Proxy logs – both SQL and W3c . We noticed in a few web reports, that people were generally uploading a [...]
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 [...]
I’ve produced a video on how to use WebSpy Vantage to report on IronPort’s Web Security Appliance’s access log files. It is quite a detailed look at the key tasks involved in setting up and using WebSpy Vantage with IronPort WSA access logs, and is therefore divided into several parts. The videos take you through [...]
Today I was speaking to a customer that had the following reporting request. "I would like to know how much of my bandwidth is being eaten by each protocol. I will then use this information to determine if circuit may need to be increased due to increased traffic". This customer was collecting syslog messages from a Cisco Firewall, then using WebSpy Vantage to generate reports. There's a simpler method.
I’m frequently asked how WebSpy Vantage utilizes a systems CPU resources. Sometimes you may notice Vantage utilizing 100% of your machine's CPU power, and other times it will be hardly touched. So here is an overview of how the software works internally so you can understand when your CPUs will and won’t be pushed.
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).
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. […]
I’m actually not trying to compare WebSpy Vantage with Google Analytics (GA), it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Both solutions provide powerful ways of tracking how visitors find your site and how they navigate through it, ideally giving you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. However, GA is a pure web analytics [...]