Threat Management Gateway Arrives

The latest major product in Microsoft’s network edge security offerings is built on Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server and has been renamed Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010. It first appeared in Nov. 2008 as TMG Medium Business Edition included as part of Essential Business Server 2008 (since discontinued.) The stand-alone TMG 2010 arrived in Nov. 2009.

Network Edge Protection

TMG 2010 is a follow on to ISA Server and is Microsoft’s current network edge security and content-caching gateway. TMG provides firewall, virtual private networking, and caching services to enable organizations to establish secure connections to the Internet.

ISA Server has evolved since its introduction in 2001, and the last version, ISA Server 2006 SP1, was released in July 2008. ISA Server 2006 SP1 is not supported on Windows Server 2008 or on 64-bit servers, and Microsoft has said there are no plans to add such support. Instead, customers intending to migrate to 64-bit Windows Server 2008 will have to use TMG 2010.