News

Forefront TMG 2010 Released to Manufacturing

• By Kurt Mackie
• 11/17/2009

Microsoft released Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 to manufacturers on Monday.

The product, which succeeds Microsoft's Internet Security and Acceleration Server, is a Web gateway designed to provide network edge protection. Forefront TMG 2010 will eventually integrate with Microsoft's "Stirling" suite, a collection of enterprise-grade security applications planned for release sometime in the first half of next year.

An evaluation copy of Forefront TMG 2010 can be downloaded here.

Microsoft built Forefront TMG 2010 as a 64-bit product. It's supported on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2. The company's security research team even claims that 64-bit machines currently offer better protection against malware in general, since many viruses were designed to attack 32-bit infrastructure.

Forefront TMG 2010 is designed to provide protection before malware gets to the client device. It's capable of running multiple security solutions from different third-party vendors simultaneously to check for malware.

The gateway uses URL filtering to automatically block access to malicious Web sites by end users. The filtering feature works by checking URLs against those monitored by Microsoft Reputation Services, which is run in a Microsoft datacenter. Microsoft's service blocks URLs with security implications, as well as "productivity and liability-oriented categories," according to a Microsoft team blog. The system also scans encrypted Web sessions via an HTTPS scanning feature.

Microsoft is claiming that a network inspection system (NIS) capability in Forefront TMG 2010 will help with the gaps between an organization's patching cycles and the emergence of new security threats. NIS tracks the "signatures of known vulnerabilities," based on research by the Microsoft Malware Protection Center.

"NIS closes the vulnerability window between vulnerability disclosures and patch deployment from weeks to a few hours," according to the team blog.

Microsoft also claims to have made firewall, VPN and e-mail protection improvements in the new product.

Last week, Microsoft released its Exchange 2010 e-mail server to manufacturing, as well as its Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server product.