If you’re using Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway, there is a bug in the logging that causes Bytes Sent and Bytes Received to be logged in reverse. This seems to only affect the Web Proxy logs – both SQL and W3c . We noticed in a few web reports, that people were generally uploading a [...]
One of the most common questions we get asked by users of Microsoft TMG and ISA is why there is so much traffic attributed to the Anonymous user. Even though unauthenticated access to the web has been disabled, they still see the ‘Anonymous’ user as one of the top users in their reports. So let’s [...]
I’ve produced a video on how to use WebSpy Vantage to report on IronPort’s Web Security Appliance’s access log files. It is quite a detailed look at the key tasks involved in setting up and using WebSpy Vantage with IronPort WSA access logs, and is therefore divided into several parts. The videos take you through [...]
If you need to analyze and report on Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway log files, the most common stumbling block is enabling access to the default SQL Express databases that contains the firewall and web proxy log files. The log databases are stored in an SQL Express instance named MSFW. By default these databases cannot [...]
Today I was speaking to a customer that had the following reporting request. "I would like to know how much of my bandwidth is being eaten by each protocol. I will then use this information to determine if circuit may need to be increased due to increased traffic". This customer was collecting syslog messages from a Cisco Firewall, then using WebSpy Vantage to generate reports. There's a simpler method.
I’m frequently asked how WebSpy Vantage utilizes a systems CPU resources. Sometimes you may notice Vantage utilizing 100% of your machine's CPU power, and other times it will be hardly touched. So here is an overview of how the software works internally so you can understand when your CPUs will and won’t be pushed.
We've just released an auto update for WebSpy Vantage (Premium, Giga and Ultimate) as well as the Web Module. This is a great update for Vantage Ultimate users as we've introduced a new feature/tab into the Web Module called 'Dynamic Reports'. Here's the full list of changes since the last auto update (2.2.0.32 on the 14th April 2010).
We have just added support for the 'Group' field in IronPort's access logs. You can add this field to your logs by adding %g in the 'Custom Fields' edit box. We have also added support for the custom fields Body Request Size and Body Response Size.
Our support for Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway is quite new and we’ve just fixed a couple of issues that we haven’t yet released as a public update yet. In particular, this update fixes the "specified cast invalid error" that occurs when importing the Web Proxy database logs.
I've been having a look through the reporting functionality included in Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway to find that not much has changed from ISA Server 2006. There is some new information regarding the newly implemented URL categorization and threat management technology, but there is very little flexibility or customization for those with reporting requirements beyond general overviews cluttered with irrelevant information. Here is what I consider to be the 8 main limitations of Microsoft Forefront TMG's reporting functionality.