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For when WebSpyrians have something to say.

Archive for the ‘Tips and Best Practices’ Category

Creating and Analyzing SonicWALL Log Files

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

I’ve put together a couple of quick videos to show you how to configure logging on your SonicWALL appliance, and how to import and analyze these log files in WebSpy Vantage.

You can also read through these steps on this page: Analyzing SonicWALL log files with WebSpy.

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Reporting on Astaro Security Gateway

Friday, December 10th, 2010

Astaro Security Gateway devices are capable of producing some very detailed log files including full URLs, usernames, categories, block action and reason which gives you some great reporting options in WebSpy Vantage.

Take a look at our dedicated Astaro pages to get an idea of what can be achieved when analyzing Astaro Web Gateway log files with WebSpy Vantage.

I’ve created some quick videos to show you how to enable the correct logging options on the Astaro Security Gateway appliance, how to import these log files into Vantage, and analyze the data on the Summaries screen. (more…)


Latest Research and 5 Tips for Managing Web 2.0 in the Workplace

Friday, December 10th, 2010

Clearswift (network security vendor and WebSpy technology partner) recently released their first report, in a series of three, on the use of social media and web 2.0 in the workplace.

From not wanting to touch social media with a ten foot pole, employers are these days increasingly aware of the benefits of social media and web 2.0 in the workplace. Clearswift used an independent market research firm and interviewed approximately 250 online office workers and 150 managers across the UK, US, Australia and Germany.

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How much do IronPort WSA Appliances eat?

Friday, November 12th, 2010

If you are thinking about deploying IronPort Web Security Appliances you probably want to plan how much disk space to budget for with regards to logging and reporting.

Every organization is different with regards to the volume of logs it creates, but I’ve averaged three data sets submitted to us by customers to produce the following estimates. (more…)


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:

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Hit and Miss – Are you Missing out on Important Hit Data?

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

Today I thought I’d cover some interesting hit information and explain how you can get more out of your data by ensuring your hits are accurately reported on.

As the term ‘hit’ can sometimes be confusing, let’s start off by properly define hits.

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Microsoft Forefront TMG logs size fields the wrong way around

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

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 lot more than they were downloading. So we checked the logs and verified the buggy behavior: (more…)