SSL acceleration and key management. Too many inbound SSL connections can quickly over-task ISA Server. Several vendors provide adjunct hardware devices to take over SSL processing, thereby increasing the number of secure connections that ISA Server can handle at once.
AEP Systems' AEP SureWare Runner SSL accelerator cards are specially designed for SSL sessions. AEP says its product can handle up to 2000 SSL transactions per second (tps), and the company's internal tests show a 220 percent increase in SSL transactions per second serviced and a 20 percent decrease in CPU utilization on an ISA Server system with a card.
nCipher offers several SSL accelerator products that work with ISA Server. The company's nFast 800 is a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140 Level 2 SSL accelerator PCI card. The nForce is a FIPS 140 Level 2 SSL accelerator and key security PCI card. The nShield is a FIPS 140 Level 3 SSL acceleration and key security PCI card. You can add multiple cards for increased processing benefit and automatic failover.
Monitoring and Administration Improvements
Most third-party add-on products either focus on collecting and analyzing critical events from one or more ISA Server systems or they monitor and report on Internet usage. Functioning as a host-based Intrusion Detection System (IDS), GFI Software's GFI LANguard Security Event Log Monitor (SELM) analyzes the event logs for ISA Server or any Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows NT machine and monitors important files for critical events. The software can alert administrators with an email or pager notification or centrally store events for historical analysis. GFI LANguard SELM excels at consolidating information from two or more ISA Server boxes, thus offering the potential to alert administrators to a wider-scale attack than might otherwise be immediately noticed.
GFI Software's GFI DownloadSecurity for ISA Server lets administrators control and view inbound HTTP and FTP downloaded files. The software includes Norman Virus Control and SOFTWIN's BitDefender antivirus engines, and you can add McAfee VirusScan antivirus product as an option. In addition, you can block files according to MIME type (e.g., executable) and extension and prevent users from downloading ActiveX and Java applets.
Intellitactics' Network Security Manager (NSM) collects security events from ISA Server to generate realtime alerts based on predefined security rules. NSM interprets, analyzes, and stores events and uses intelligence to appropriately classify threats and minimize false positives.
Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) is a centralized reporting tool for monitoring and managing Microsoft server products, including ISA Server. Management pack modules are available for each server product and provide predefined computer groups, processing rules, filters, alerts, and performance sampling. Pricing is set according to each processor the software runs on and for each processor the software manages, plus an additional fee for each processor that uses a management pack module. MOM is also available as part of Microsoft's Universal Subscription package.
NetIQ's AppManager for Microsoft ISA Server monitors one or more ISA Server systems from one console, storing performance and event-log data in a Microsoft SQL Server database. The software can alert administrators through SNMP, email, or pager notifications. During a downtime event or alert, AppManager for Microsoft ISA Server stores key statistics, such as the total number of requests and bytes being sent from ISA Server to remote locations.
Another NetIQ product called Firewall Suite reports on critical errors, warnings, and rules triggered by ISA Server and includes more than 200 customizable reports. The software monitors event logs, IP devices, and services. If a device or service goes down, the product can alert administrators by email, audio alarm, or pager.
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