For small and mid-sized companies in the San Francisco region, Silicon Valley, and many cities nationwide, Progent's Microsoft Gold-certified professionals offer computer support and IT consulting services for the complete family of MS .NET Enterprise Servers, Windows Server, and Microsoft Dynamics applications. Progent's integration, administration, support, and application programming offerings include network design, installation, and deployment.
Microsoft ISA Server 2004
Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2004 is the advanced Firewall, VPN, and Web cache technology that enhances network performance and helps protect businesses of all sizes from attack by both external and internal threats.
Microsoft ISA Server 2004 provides high-level protection, manageability, and speedy and safe access for multiple types of networks. It is especially effective for securing environments that are running Microsoft applications, such as Microsoft OWA, MS Internet Information Services, MS SharePoint Portal Server, Microsoft Routing and Remote Access Service, and MS AD directory service.
MS ISA Server 2004 offers a comprehensive, application-layer-aware firewall that guards organizations of all sizes from threats from both external and inside sources. ISA Server 2004 does intensive examination of Internet protocols such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol, enabling it to uncover many attacks that traditional firewalls cannot sense. The integrated firewall and Virtual Private Network design of MS ISA Server enables stateful filtering of all VPN traffic. The ISA Server firewalll also provides Virtual Private Network client inspection for Microsoft Windows Server 2003-powered isolation technology, helping to guard networks from threats that arrive via a Virtual Private Network connection. In addition, an innovative user interface, wizards, knowledge base, and a variety of administration tools allow administrators to eliminate common security implementation problems.
MS Internet Security and Acceleration Server incorporates powerful administration tools to streamline key tasks including policy specification, data routing, server publishing, and monitoring. Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server builds on Windows Server protection, directory, Virtual Private Networking, and throughput control. The firewall and web cache can be deployed on individual servers or incorporated on a single physical device. In either scenario, ISA 2004 can dramatically enhance network security, enforce unified Internet use policy, speed up web access, and increase employee efficiency.
Benefits of Microsoft ISA Server 2004
Important benefits that distinguish Microsoft ISA Server 2004 from Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000 and other firewall products include its powerful security features, ease of use, and ability to deliver fast and secure Internet access.
Advanced Protection
MS ISA 2004 is built to protect your network against the latest generation of threats by providing stateful packet filtering and packet and circuit filtering. Stateful packet filtering decides which packets are permitted to pass through to the protected network circuit and application-layer proxy services. This process dynamically opens ports only as appropriate and then disables the ports when the session terminates. Circuit filtering provides application-invisible circuit gateways for multiplatform connectivity to Windows Media platforms, Telnet, RealAudio, and many other Internet protocols. The circuit-layer security of Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server complements dynamic packet filtering to improve protection and ease of use.
In addition to stateful packet and circuit filtering, MS Internet Security and Acceleration Server also controls application-specific data with application, command, and data-aware filters. Through smart filtering of VPN, Hypertext Transfer Protocol, FTP, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, Post Office Protocol 3, DNS, H.323 conferencing, streaming media, and remote procedure call traffic, Microsoft ISA 2004 can accept, block, redirect, and edit traffic according to content.
Ease of Use
MS ISA 2004 is feature-rich yet easy for administrators to use. Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server offers multinetworking system functions, unified Virtual Private Network, firewall management through a powerful GUI policy editor, intuitive system templates, streamlined wizards, and enhanced troubleshooting tools. Microsoft ISA 2004 also simplifies firewall configuration by automatically initializing both firewall and Web-caching components. Also, it supports translating configuration parameters to XML, real-time firewall session analysis, and firewall user groups.
Fast and Secure Access
Microsoft ISA 2004 provides quick and secure Internet access by thoroughly integrating Virtual Private Network capability into the firewall design, speeding up Web caching, and maximizing firewall filtering processes. Integrated IPsec tunnel mode functions for site-to-site Virtual Private Network connections makes it easy to interface Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server to branch office VPN providers. IPsec tunnel mode capability also provides deep Virtual Private Network client inspection and firewall policy support for Windows-powered isolation technology, giving an organization's user groups enhanced protection. Support for advanced third-party filters and a full-featured software development kit further extend the capabilities of Microsoft ISA 2004.
New Features of ISA Server 2004
MS ISA 2004 offers numerous new features and enhancement, particularly when installed on a system running Windows Server 2003 or later. These include:
A new, intuitive user interface
Improved VPN support
VPN quarantine capabilities
More extensive protocol support
Customized protocol definitions
Microsoft OWA Publishing Support
Improved Web publishing
Port redirection for server publishing rules
RADIUS support for Web proxy client authentication
Delegation of basic authentication
Firewall-generated forms (forms-based authentication)
Improved HTTP filtering
Improved monitoring and reporting
How Progent's Consultants Provide Microsoft ISA Server 2004 Help
Firewalls and security rules are difficult to plan and configure in a way that is optimized for your business. Excessive restrictions can impede operations and hinder productivity, but overly lax security makes your network open to destructive hackers and viruses.
Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants have extensive experience
developing Microsoft-based security solutions for IT networks with
multiple sites, remote workers, and mission-critical eCommerce
applications. A Progent consultant is ready to give your company access to a security expert who can
plan and implement a configuration of ISA Server 2004 that supports your business
requirements without adversely restricting your network.
