Microsoft Forefront TMG's web filtering capabilities officially ended on 31 December 2015. However, a large portion of Forefront TMG users have not migrated to an alternative platform or are struggling [...]
The new Private Reports feature in Fastvue Reporter (Sophos Reporter 2.0 or TMG Reporter 3.0) enables you to share reports with people in your organization securely, without giving them access [...]
Finally! Fastvue TMG Reporter v3.0 is now available! Thank you to all beta testers that helped iron out all the issues over the past few months! New Features: Fastvue Site [...]
I'm excited to announce that Fastvue TMG Reporter 3.0 Beta is now available to test out! New Features in Fastvue TMG Reporter 3.0 Fastvue Site Clean. Private Report Sharing (including [...]
It's been a year since I created the Exchange 2013 Forms based authentication templates for Forefront TMG. When they were released, only the main login and logout forms were reworked in [...]
Running resource intensive applications on a virtual machine is a great way to ensure they do not consume more compute resource than is necessary, and the same physical machine can be [...]
I'd like to share an important issue I discovered recently that many Forefront TMG administrators may be experiencing. The problem affects accessing popular HTTPS websites when the Forefront TMG HTTPS [...]
In my previous article What everyone should know about HTTPS, SSL, TLS and Certificates, I covered the basics of cryptography protocols and I touched lightly on the point that SSL and [...]
UPDATE (2016-05-01): Now that Microsoft have officially turned off Web Protection Services, please see our latest article on why Finding a Forefront TMG replacement is more urgent than you thought! [...]
As you probably know, Microsoft stopped selling Forefront TMG as well as its subscription based Web Protection Services in December 2011. Although you can still purchase Forefront TMG through the [...]
When I look at firewalls rule sets maintained by other companies, I often notice the same common mistakes. The one I see most often is potentially the worst. I can [...]
We've created a new mobile friendly Forefront TMG Forms Based Authentication template in the new Exchange 2013 style. Download it here!
Last week we had a problem with one of our customers that was trying to access a new web site recently built and hosted at their cloud provider. When running [...]
Uncle Ben told Peter Parker “With great power comes great responsibility”. With TMG Reporter and Webspy Vantage you gain total visibility of what your users are up to. This allows [...]
It is good practice to keep regular backups of your Forefront TMG Configuration files. Even if you have a Forefront TMG Array with the configuration in multiple locations, this simply [...]
Fastvue Reporter has some enhancements when it comes to processing multiple reports, with particular benefits to IT and Network Security teams. It will now schedule multiple report jobs sequentially based [...]
I am frequently asked by users of Forefront TMG, how to continue using the product now that Microsoft is no longer selling licences as of January 2013. The most common [...]
It's official! Fastvue TMG Reporter is the best reporting application for Forefront TMG as voted by ISAServer.org readers! ISAserver.org (http://www.isaserver.org) is the leading Microsoft Forefront TMG / UAG and ISA [...]
Recently I posted an article on ISAserver.org on using Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 to monitor and optionally block network access based on the country/geography of the source or [...]
It was almost 6:00 pm on Friday evening and I was setting my mind on what to do with my weekend when suddenly the phone rings. “Hey Uilson, please help [...]
A common concern for network administrators is how to manage traffic to high bandwidth sites. YouTube.com is one specific site that network administrators need to watch closely. The site holds [...]
Growing concerns about Internet security spurred the development of secure encrypted protocols to deliver web content. The Secure Sockets Layer Protocol was developed and released by Netscape in 1994, 19 years ago. SSL [...]
Richard Hicks (MVP) Richard Hicks is a guy worth listening to when it comes to Forefront TMG. He has been installing, configuring, and managing TMG and its predecessors [...]
After a lengthy beta period, we are happy to announce that Fastvue TMG Reporter 2.1 has been officially released! TMG Reporter 2.1 features detailed Activity Reports, Scheduled Custom Reports, Comprehensive [...]
When configuring your Forefront TMG Web Access policy, there is an option to enable HTTPS inspection. In this article, I will aim to clear up some confusion surrounding HTTPS inspection in [...]
In September 2012, Microsoft announced it was discontinuing its popular Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) edge security product (read the announcement). Although mainstream support will continue through to 2015, all sales [...]
Everyone has seen the Anonymous user in their Forefront TMG Reports. This is because Forefront TMG logs 'anonymous' in the username field for all unauthenticated traffic. We have blogged about the Forefront TMG Anonymous User, and written numerous support articles. But here is the best tip we can give you to reduce unauthenticated traffic in Forefront TMG:
We're happy to announce Fastvue TMG Reporter 2.1 Beta is now available! New features include Activity Reports, Custom Report Scheduling, Comprehensive Filtering, Drilldown Reporting, Import from remote SQL Logs, and native support for Windows Server 2012 and Window 8.
The Fastvue Log Grep Utility takes a folder of W3C text logs (or any text files), and produces new files containing only the log lines matching your search criteria. The new files are unaltered in format and structure and retain the original log headers. The Fastvue Log Grep Utility is perfect for cutting down a folder of Forefront TMG or ISA Server W3C text logs to just the information in your search string. You can then import these reduced files into WebSpy Vantage, or any other log analysis app. And it's Free!
Forefront TMG's ISP redundancy allows you to connect two separate ISP's as routes out to the Internet. There are two configurations; fail-over or load balanced. Failover configuration provides a robust Internet connection in [...]
Forefront TMG does not log authenticated usernames or site hostnames for SecureNAT Clients. The Top Sites sections in Fastvue TMG Reporter will therefore only show IP addresses for SecureNAT traffic, and the Top Users sections will only show the Anonymous user. Fortunately the site hostname issue can be fixed by applying a hotfix from Microsoft. This enables Forefront TMG to log the hostname with the URL, so that site names can be reported on in Fastvue TMG Reporter.
Fastvue Inc acquires WebSpy’s product development and distribution business worldwide. We are very happy to announce that Fastvue has successfully acquired WebSpy, a long time leader in log analysis and [...]
Forefront TMG web chaining is a clever way to allow one Forefront TMG server to pass proxy clients on to another TMG server that has Internet access. However, these scenarios pose a unique challenge for reporting on user activity. This article takes you through configuring a Forefront TMG web chaining environment, and provides some options to overcome the issue they create for reporting on user Internet activity.
We have recently discovered and fixed an issue with TMG Reporter's data retention policy which, if left un-patched, could result in a loss of imported data. We highly recommend updating your installation of TMG Reporter to avoid losing any historical data that has been imported into TMG Reporter to date.
Old machines running IE6 with no service packs or security updates are a big security concern. Fortunately you can use TMG Reporter to easily identify and track down old neglected 'zombie' machines that may still be running IE6 and connecting to the internet. Just create an alert, sit back and relax, and wait for the IE6 zombies to come out and play!
Fastvue TMG Reporter gives you great insight into what sites are being accessed. Forefront TMG administrators are often surprised to see sites in their reports that they believed were being blocked by their Forefront TMG access rules. By running reports on these sites, they often discover that it is due to an unintended consequence of another access rule that permits traffic for a different situation. I thought it would be useful to review the various methods of site blocking to ensure that your rules are as broad or as specific as they need to be.
From anonymous browsing to 'I didn't visit that site!'. Here are our answers to the five most commonly asked Forefront TMG Reporting questions.
Forefront TMG reporting just received a huge upgrade with the new features in the latest Fastvue TMG Reporter release. Custom Reports, SQL Support and more.
By actively monitoring Forefront TMG's Intrusion Prevention and Malware Inspection events, you can identify the source of vulnerabilities and take immediate action. This article explains how to test the intrusion prevention (NIS) system as well as the malware inspection system, and how to monitor and alert on these events.
This article describes the different methods of hosting multiple web sites on a single host using Microsoft IIS, and publishing web sites with Forefront TMG
Etienne Liebetrau takes you through some simple DNS hacking techniques, and explains how Forefront TMG can help protect against DNS exploits.
Today Microsoft announced that they are discontinuing Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG). This is only one of the major changes that Microsoft is making to the Forefront product line in [...]
Microsoft Forefront TMG 2010's Web Publishing feature enables you to securely publish internal sites such as Outlook Web Access and SharePoint to the external network. Using Forms Authentication to secure [...]
Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 is a powerful application-layer firewall and web proxy server. TMG also includes advanced web protection technologies for providing essential security for clients accessing resources [...]
Fastvue TMG Reporter provides a Top Applications chart in the Bandwidth Dashboard, which is built using the User Agent field in Forefront TMG's proxy log file (referred to as ClientAgent [...]
Fastvue TMG Reporter is unique in that it allows you to monitor internet usage in real-time. Another great feature is that it allows you to generate longer term internet usage reports. [...]
Determining the system requirements you need to run TMG Reporter depends largely on the Forefront TMG configuration that you have, the logging method and the volume of log records being [...]
On July 22nd 2012 Microsoft pushed all users to the latest Live Messenger version (Live Messenger 2011). For most users, everything worked fine, but for many organizations working behind a proxy solution [...]
There are a few reasons you might want to disable logging on a specific system policy rule. Mainly this is to reduce the amount of logged information speeding up not only [...]
Malware trends change over time and so do the methods of attack. Once upon a time the trend was to build a malicious site, jam it full of exploit code [...]
By default, Fastvue TMG Reporter is open and unrestricted for anonymous users to view. For a number of privacy related reasons you might need to restrict access to the site. [...]
When using Kerberos authentication as well as CARP on a TMG array you will notice a certain anomaly in TMG Reporter's Top Users section. The cause of the traffic With [...]
Towards the end of June 2012, we started to see many reports in various forums, LinkedIn Groups, and twitter, about the Forefront TMG Services stopping unexpectedly. These issues had the [...]
Towards the end of June 2012, we started to see many reports in various forums, LinkedIn Groups, and twitter, about the Forefront TMG Services stopping unexpectedly. These issues had the [...]
One incredibly handy feature of TMG Reporter is the Productivity classification. This can not only be used to display productivity stats on the dashboard but also in defining alerts. Fastvue [...]
If you are looking for a world class, turn-key edge security solution, you don't need to look any further than the Celestix MSA Threat Management Gateway appliances. These appliances run [...]
Microsoft Forefront TMG 2010 supports a variety of different logging methods, and until now TMG Reporter has supported only the SQL Express and W3C Extended log methods. But we're pleased to announce support for [...]
There are several logging options to choose from when configuring Forefront TMG 2010, including the option to log to a remote SQL server. Logging to a remote SQL server historically [...]
With numerous improvements to the logging infrastructure in Forefront TMG 2010, logging is pretty much a “set it and forget it” operation these days. Forefront TMG firewall administrators typically don’t [...]
A couple of days ago I was looking for a tool to exclude a site from being served from Forefront TMG's cache, and came across CacheDir in the Forefront TMG [...]
As I outlined in a previous blog post, the native reporting tools included with Forefront TMG 2010 are quite limited. In addition to the shortcomings I mentioned previously, deployments of [...]
It may sound strange, but we have designed Fastvue TMG Reporter to be a resource intensive application. We've done this so that TMG Reporter imports your logs and produces reports [...]
One of the areas that improved significantly in Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 is logging. Sure, it doesn’t get all the attention that TMG’s advanced web protection capabilities do. [...]
I just stumbled across this very informative dive into the wonderful world of Forefront TMG Caching by Deb Shinder: Understanding TMG Web Caching Concepts and Architectures. Hope you find it [...]
TMG Reporter gets its information through Forefront TMG's Web Proxy and Firewall Log files. If these logs are lacking information, some sections of TMG Reporter will be blank or simply not [...]
It's out. It's here. It's now! After a very successful beta period, we have officially released TMG Reporter version 2.0! Thank you for helping us bug fix, fine tune and improve TMG Reporter to [...]
Since our 2.0.0.10 release last week, we have been busily adding the final touches to TMG Reporter 2.0 for the official release this weekend! Over the past week, we have made [...]
We recently posted an update to TMG Reporter Beta - build 2.0.0.7. Unfortunately it introduced some issues for those that were already using an earlier version of the beta. As [...]
Update - We have since released 2.0.0.10 to fix issues that some customers were experiencing with 2.0.0.7. Read about the fixes, and download the latest build. ----- We have just [...]
Since the release of Fastvue for TMG version 1.0 back December 2011, we have had an overwhelming amount of positive feedback for our real time dashboard and alerting system for [...]
Remember when your home network consisted of a single PC and the internet? Now you have a PC, a macbook, an iPhone, an Android, a Playstation, an Xbox, a Wii, [...]
Typically, if you need to discover the version of a piece of software, the convention is to go to Help | About. Microsoft Forefront TMG is no exception, however TMG [...]
About six months ago we embarked on a project to design a real time dashboard that helps network administrators quickly answer the question - What is going on in my [...]
We are pleased to announce that Fastvue for TMG has received a Silver Award on the premier site for TMG and ISA Server administration, ISAServer.org. Microsoft MVP Richard Hicks spent [...]
I came across a good series of videos that takes you through the entire process of installing and configuring Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway. Although there is no sound in [...]
So you have configured an access rule in Forefront TMG to only allow authenticated traffic, yet you still have the 'Anonymous' user showing in your log files and in the [...]
Yep that's right! After a few months in beta and receiving top quality feedback from our committed and ever growing list of beta testers, we've finally ripped the 'Beta' badge [...]
Thank you for your continued support of Fastvue for TMG. We truly appreciate your participation as a beta tester and we are excited to be approaching full release. We were wondering [...]
With all the great feedback coming in, we realized we needed a central place where beta testers could ask questions, submit feedback and search for answers. The fastvue.co website is [...]
Our inaugural product Fastvue for TMG has now been in beta for a few weeks and we are humbled to have already received such a great response from the Forefront [...]
Thanks to everyone that have been testing Fastvue for TMG for the past few weeks. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and invaluable. We've been releasing new builds almost daily [...]
After many months with our heads buried in code, we’re finally there! (we think!). Our first product Fastvue for TMG is available for download, and we're looking for beta testers to give it [...]