ISA Server 2000 offers speedy Web access and security without compromise.

ISA Server 2000 Makes Connectivity Simple, Secure

ISA Server 2000 offers speedy Web access and security without compromise.

• By Lucian Lui
• 11/01/2000

Among the challenges that you face as an IT professional is successfully managing your company’s connection to the Internet—while keeping intruders from unauthorized use of sensitive information. The newest addition to the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server family, Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000, offers an enterprise firewall and Web-caching server designed to provide secure, fast, and manageable Internet connectivity.

ISA Server 2000 was designed to meet the needs of today’s Internet-enabled business. Customers asked us for the security and speed needed to conduct business online and remain competitive. We listened and responded to the demand for Internet connectivity without compromising employee productivity or information assets. With ISA Server, you no longer need to make a tradeoff with security, manageability or performance.

The protection of information assets is critical to any organization’s IT infrastructure—a responsibility that falls on the IT administrator. ISA Server’s multilayer firewall secures private networks and Web sites at the packet-, circuit-, and application-layer. The firewall features stateful inspection, broad application support, integrated virtual private networking, integrated intrusion detection, system hardening, and “smart” data-aware application filters, further enhancing network security.

But your job as the IT administrator doesn’t end with keeping people out—you also have to look for ways to enhance the user experience. ISA Server can be deployed as a Web caching server, serving popular Web content stored locally rather than retrieving it from the Internet each time. ISA Server’s high-performance Web cache accelerates internal and external Web access, provides bandwidth savings, and offloads stress from Web servers.

As an administrator, you also must implement your company’s or client’s Internet usage policies. With ISA Server, you can create detailed rules for managing traffic and enforcing enterprise and local policies by user and group, application, site, content type and schedule. ISA Server can be deployed in three modes: Firewall only, Web Cache only or Integrated Mode. Whether Internet access is through the firewall or through the Web cache, administrators can simply create one unified access policy that restricts all Internet access, making security manageable.

Every day more and more companies connect their internal networks to the Internet. In order to address this variety, you need solutions that are flexible. ISA Server 2000 provides an architecture that can be readily customized or extended with in-house development or a large selection of third-party add-ons.

The combination of firewall and cache empowers the IT professional with simplified reporting, greater manageability, and the ability to employ unified policies. The union of these capabilities creates value for you as an IT professional as well as your employer.

[Read Roberta Bragg’s article on ISA Server in this issue.—Ed.]