Our website requires you install or enable flash player for full experience, you can download flash player by clicking here.
Make sure you also have javascript enabled so that flash player & menus work correctly.

Get Adobe Flash player

What would you like to monitor?

For when WebSpyrians have something to say.

Archive for the ‘Microsoft ISA Server’ Category

Watch your TMG’s waist line. Switch log format and reduce fat now!

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

We often recommend customers using Microsoft ISA or TMG switch their logging to W3C text file, in order to get the best possible import speed, and also because the text logs are much easier to access from a remote machine (see my previous article on accessing TMG’s SQL Express Log database). Logging to the default MSDE or SQL Express databases also requires more resources in terms of processor utilization, memory consumption and disk I/O.

But there is another advantage to switching to text. They take up considerably less disk space. Here are some figures:

(more…)


Tips from TMG Expert: Changing WebSpy Vantage Scheduled Task Recurrence Interval

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Microsoft ISA Server and Forefront TMG users are probably familiar with isaserver.org’s informative news articles, tutorials, blogs and forums. I just wanted to bring your attention to one of isaserver.org’s contributing blog authors, Richard Hicks.

Richard has been working with Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 and its predecessors for more than 12 years. He has designed and deployed network security solutions using TMG and ISA for SMB’s, military and defense organizations, and Fortune 500 companies around the world.

In addition to his isaserver.org blogs, Richard has his own ISA/TMG blog where he recently posted some useful tips on changing WebSpy Vantage’s scheduled task recurrence interval using the schtasks.exe command line tool. Adding more frequent import options (i.e. hourly) is on the product roadmap but until then, using the command line tool is a great alternative.
(more…)


Why there is so much anonymous traffic in Microsoft TMG and ISA logs

Monday, July 19th, 2010


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 use WebSpy Vantage to drill into that Anonymous user and find out what is going on. (more…)


Vantage Update 2.2.0.43

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

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’.

If you’re publishing the same report to the Web Module each day, you can use the Dynamic Reports tab to select a date range and a department (or whatever organizational groups you have defined) and the Web Module will collate all the daily reports that match that filter into one report. This allows you to report on entire week, month or year by simply ‘reporting on reports’, rather than reporting months of raw storage data.

Here’s the full list of changes since the last auto update (2.2.0.32 on the 14th April 2010).

Application Changes

  • Added Dynamic Reports feature to the Web Module.
  • Rewrote the Web Module transfer protocol. New protocol adds version checking, connection checking, and integrity checking for high latency environments.
  • Purge data from storage task no longer prevents importing new hits when all data is removed from an input within a storage.
  • IPv6 addresses now show IPv4-mapped addresses as plain IPv4 addresses in summaries.
  • IPv6 and IPv4 addresses are now freely interchangable in filter expressions.
  • Fixed IPv6 drilldowns on the Summaries screen
  • SQL inputs can now be resumed from the previous position. Previously any input that was partially imported would be skipped when importing new hits.
  • Template-based analysis has been fixed, no longer results in blank/non-existent analysis.
  • Added new string manipulation functions to expression language; Contains, StartsWith, EndsWith, IndexOf.

Loader Changes

  • Astaro: Now checks that the ID field is present in a line before attempting to read it.
  • Barracuda Web Filter: Added this format to replace Spy Filter.
  • BlueCoat Proxy SG W3C: Added support for gmttime, timestamp, x-bluecoat-surfcontrol-is-denied and x-bluecoat-transaction-id.
  • ClearSwift: Added a new loader group for ClearSwift that includes the MimeSweeper loaders
  • ClearSwift SECURE Web Gatway: Now supported with the Web Appliance loader
  • Clearswift Web Appliance: User summary displays Source IP if Username is blank.
  • IronPort WSA: Fixed memory usage issues.
  • Microsoft FTMG: Added category name lookup to SQL loader.
  • Microsoft FTMG: No longer fails to import lines where the rule field contains square brackets.
  • Microsoft FTMG: URL Category field is now a string instead of an integer. Added URL Categorization Reason field.
  • Microsoft FTMG: Fixed memory usage issues.
  • Microsoft IIS W3C: No longer hangs or crashes when loading a file that isn’t IIS W3C.
  • NetAsq: Added support for srcname field. The Username summary is populated with user first, and then srcname if user is blank. The User summary is also now populated with Source IPs if the Username summary is blank.

To update WebSpy Vantage, simple select Tools | Check for updates.

To update the Web Module, login to the Web Module server, right-click the WebSpy system tray icon, and select Check for updates.

As always, please contact us if you have any issues or questions.


3 Simple Reasons Why Resellers Want WebSpy

Friday, April 16th, 2010

To set things straight from the get-go, this is not a plug about our partner program, margin structure or reseller support. All the ingredients necessary to bake a successful partner cake are present (and being improved…get ready for some exciting partner announcement in the coming weeks). No, this is simply a very factual overview of the Network and Security Industry, where majority of security vendors fall short and where WebSpy continues to save our resellers’ day.

(more…)


Vantage Update 2.2.0.27 – Fix for Microsoft FTMG SQL Import

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Our support for Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway is quite new and we’ve just fixed a couple of issues in build 2.2.0.27. In particular, this update fixes the “specified cast invalid error” that occurs when importing the Web Proxy database logs.

Check your version in Help | About. If you are running 2.2.0.27 or above, then you already have this update. If not, make sure you update to your software by selecting Tools | Check for updates.