Microsoft Certified Consultants ISA Server 2006 Expertise: Design, Support, Troubleshooting
For small and mid-sized businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Jose, or anywhere in the U.S., Progent's Microsoft-certified experts offer network assistance and professional consulting support for the entire family of Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers, Microsoft Windows Server 2008, and Microsoft Windows Server 2003. Progent's planning, installation, update, and support services include system architecture, deployment, and management help for
project management and documentation, on-site and remote
technical help and system troubleshooting,
HelpDesk Call Center Support, comprehensive
security expertise, and full-service
outsourcing.
Overview of Microsoft ISA Server 2006
Hacking incidents against businesses are increasing exponentially. Because traditional network firewalls are not designed to prevent intrusions to the application layer, most Internet-based attacks target applications such as email, Web server, and on-line collaboration software. Compounding the problem is the fact that today’s workforce is becoming more, which carries additional security challenges. Many threats bypass traditional stateful packet inspection-only firewalls through protocols such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Traditional packet inspection firewalls are not equipped to deal with application-based threats because they do not offer deep inspection of Web-based content. Networks without advanced firewalls that provide application-layer protection are increasingly vulnerable to identity theft, Web site defacement, unauthorized network access, theft of proprietary information, and service disruption, all of which can result in significant loss of productivity and profit.
ISA Server 2006 is a multi-functional edge gateway that provides a fully integrated application layer firewall, virtual private network (VPN), proxy, and Web caching solution for protecting the Internet-facing networks of any organization against a broad range of attacks. Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006 allows your business to defend your network from external and internal Internet-based threats, securely publish information for remote access, and safely connect your branch offices. ISA Server 2006 accomplishes all this by delivering these core capabilities:
Integrated Security
Based on the Windows Server 2003 platform, ISA Server 2006 secures your environment and protects your partners and users from malicious programs. ISA Server 2006 provides improved security through integration with Microsoft application infrastructure and Microsoft Windows services such as NTLM and Kerberos authentication, the Active Directory directory service, VPN, Routing and Remote Access, and Network Load Balancing (NLB).
Efficient Management
ISA Server 2006 makes it easy to enable new usage scenarios with your existing infrastructure. ISA Server 2006 provides reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and simplified deployment and management through easy-to-use user interface, tools, flexible software development kit (SDK), remote management, and strong logging and reporting capabilities.
Fast and Secure Access
ISA Server 2006 ensures your data and applications are safe and users are productive. With its compression, caching, single sign on, and link translation features, ISA Server 2006 provides secure, high speed, and seamless user access to corporate applications and data.
New Features and Benefits of Microsoft ISA Server 2006
New features of Microsoft ISA 2006 offer substantial business benefits for common applications such as web access protection, secure application publishing, and branch office gateways. The features introduced by Microsoft ISA Server and their benefits for these applications include:
Web Access Protection
Multi-layer deep content inspection helps protect IT assets and corporate intellectual property such as data stored in IIS, Exchange Server, Windows SharePoint Services, and other network infrastructure resources from attackers, viruses, and unauthorized use with comprehensive and flexible policies, customizable protocol filters, and network routing relationships. This protects internal network resources by screening all incoming and outgoing Internet traffic and protecting against advanced attacks. This also provides controlled user access to resources (both internal and external).
Enhanced flood resiliency features for event handling and monitoring help defend your network and provide better resistance to denial of service attacks and distributed denial of service attacks. This provides resiliency against externally originated attacks.
Enhanced worm resiliency through simplified client IP alert pooling and connection quotas mitigates the effects infected computers have on your network. This provides resiliency against internally originated attacks.
Enhanced attack remediation through comprehensive alert triggers and responses can quickly notify administrators of network problems. This provides remediation during attacks.
Log throttling and control of memory consumption and pending DNS queries provide enhanced resource control. This provides mitigation measures when a network is under attack and minimize performance impact on the network.
Unified management and monitoring across your ISA Server infrastructure can be achieved with the ISA Server 2006 Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager, and enterprise-level and array-level policies can be used to easily control security and access rules across your organization. This provides cost-effective centralized management.
Secure Application Publishing
SSL bridging provides inspection of encrypted content, better application scalability through offloading SSL processing to ISA Server, and lower latency through support for SSL hardware accelerators. This maintains confidentiality of communications.
Enhanced multi-factor authentication (smart cards and one-time passwords), flexible integration with Active Directory (LDAP), and customizable forms-based authentication for almost any Web application and client device increases security and deployment flexibility for Web application servers. This provides complete security for every instance that a user remotely accesses a corporate resource.
Enhanced authentication delegation (including NTLM, Kerberos, and SecurID) and improved session management that detects non-user traffic through automatic idle-based time-outs makes it easier to integrate ISA Server with your existing authentication infrastructure and gain more access control. This accommodates the needs of increasingly mobile workforce using different devices.
Unified firewall and VPN policy management, deep content inspection, and VPN Quarantine integration makes it easier to secure inbound traffic and protect your network from inside attacks through VPN client connections. This protects internal corporate resources while providing secure access to authenticated users.
Web Publishing Load Balancing makes it easy to deploy entire farms of Web servers behind ISA Server using session-based and IP-based affinity with automatic out-of-service detection. This ensure resources are always available and served up quickly when accessed remotely.
Branch Office Gateways
A multi-network architecture, network templates and configuration wizards, and stateful IP routing and inspection makes it easy to deploy ISA Server into existing IT environments as an edge, departmental, or branch office firewall without changing your network architecture. This makes it possible to manage policy efficiently and cost effectively across geographically dispersed offices.
BITS caching to accelerate the deployment of software updates and keep remote computers protected makes it possible to Maintain A secure branch office infrastructure.
Integrated Web caching in corporate data centers enhances network performance and reduce bandwidth costs. Distributed hierarchical caching optimizes branch office content delivery. (Enterprise Edition only). This provides fast access while combating the high cost of WAN connectivity.
Faster propagation of enterprise policies, reduced server requirements, and low-bandwidth optimizations allow you to manage remote ISA Server computers more effectively. This makes it possible to manage deployment of policy between offices while optimizing available bandwidth.
HTTP traffic compression and caching improve Web page load times and reduce WAN costs for users in branch offices. This improves slow, unreliable Web access for branch offices and utilizes limited bandwidth at the branch office efficiently.
Diffserv IP settings help ensure that the highest priority applications get precedence over other network traffic, providing better bandwidth utilization and response times for critical Web resources. This ensures that applications with higher business priority always have enough bandwidth.
How Progent's Microsoft Certified Consultants Can Provide ISA Server 2006 Help
Firewalls and security rules are complicated to plan and configure in a way that is optimized for your business. Excessive restrictions can impede workflow and hinder productivity, but overly lax security leaves your system open to malicious hackers and viruses.
Progent's Microsoft-certified Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006 consultants can help you plan, cost-justify, test, install, configure, and support the Standard or Enterprise Version of ISA Server 2006 on your network. Progent's certified CISM and CISSP security consulting professionals can help you develop a comprehensive security strategy that includes other Microsoft products by offering services such as
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 consulting for secure messaging and
Microsoft Operations Manager expertise for security monitoring, alerts, and reporting. Progent also maintains one of the country's largest teams of
Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts (CCIEs) who can help you design and support a secure physical network infrastructure with strategically selected and configured switches, routers and firewalls such as PIX and ASA network appliances. Progent can provide world-class ISA Server expertise in the form of regularly scheduled support, urgent onsite or remote help, or full-service IT outsourcing.
Contact Progent for Microsoft ISA Server 2006 Solutions
If you need help with Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006, call 800-993-9400 or contact isa-server-help@progent.com
