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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…)
Friday, June 18th, 2010
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 the following activities:
Friday, June 11th, 2010
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 be accessed by a remote computer. I’d first like to say that we recommend changing TMG’s logging to W3C text files, as these logs are about 5-6 times faster to import, and you don’t need to worry about the steps below.
But if you need to stick with the SQL Express logging, here are the basic steps to enable access to the logs from a remote computer: (more…)
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
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. In theory, this sounds like a fair plan. Unfortunately, the Cisco Firewall logs many different types of messages. Some to do with denied packets, some to do with authentication, some for vpn and so on. The information contained within each message changes. Some events include the size information that is required for any type of bandwidth assessment and some don’t. Correlating the required events to get any sort of accurate ‘bandwidth’ representation is a bit of a nightmare.
Fortunately, there’s a simpler method. (more…)
Friday, May 21st, 2010
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. (more…)
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) popularity is starting to pick up. WebSpy added support for analyzing and reporting on TMG logs even before the public release and have been improving our compatibility ever since.
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