ISA Server 2004 More Flexible, Secure

Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004 Standard Edition, a firewall and content caching application, supports more network configuration options than its predecessor, ISA 2000, and contains incremental improvements to its overall security, virtual private network (VPN) support, administrative interface, and more. However, the product, which is now in beta and is expected to ship in mid-2004, has no provisions for selectively filtering Web services, and it also lacks support for some Voice-over-IP (VoIP) scenarios, areas particularly important to Microsoft’s broader strategy.

Firewalls Critical to Trustworthy Computing

Microsoft is attacking security on many fronts, such as discovering and fixing code vulnerabilities, removing or disabling unneeded services in its products, blocking unsafe e-mail file attachments, providing hooks for virus scanners, supporting stronger authentication methods, attacking spam, and supporting the signing and encryption of both networked and stored data.