14 DAY TRIAL // At a little over a month since it pushed Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 into Release Candidate stage, Microsoft has released the product to manufacturing. Ahead of the RC milestone, TGM 2010 went through no less than three Beta releases, a period of which Microsoft users to harvest feedback on the security solution. RTM’d on November 16th, 2009, Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 will be offered for purchase soon, the Redmond company promised, although no specific deadline of general availability was offered.
Still, customers looking to get a taste of what TGM 2010 RTM brings to the table can grab the gold release via the Microsoft Download Center. Microsoft is currently delivering evaluation versions of TGM 2010 RTM in a couple of flavors, namely Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. Yaron Zakai-Or, Group Program manager, Forefront TMG, indicated that input from testers and early adopters was a key element in the development process of TGM 2010.
“Forefront TMG provides an unparalleled value to the network security marketplace by integrating multiple web security technologies into a single, comprehensive solution. Forefront TMG is also all about “the basics” to ensure that besides the breadth of new features, Forefront TMG also provides the best infrastructure to run those features: reliability, scalability, performance and security. I would also like to take this opportunity and personally thank the very active user community in providing feedback throughout the cycle. Your support in downloading, deploying early versions and providing feedback was essential for us in the process of creating this product,” revealed Yaron Zakai-Or.
According to Microsoft, TGM 2010 includes a range of features which are designed to help companies protect their environments. First off, Forefront TGM should be regarded as a Secure Web Gateway. Customers that will choose to leverage TGM 2010 will find that the product delivers a bundle of detection technologies from URL filtering, to anti-malware, and even intrusion prevention.
Yaron Zakai-Or enumerated the features that recommend TGM 2010 for the role of protecting business networks:
“- URL Filtering: URL Filtering allows controlling end-user access to Web sites, protecting the organization by denying access to known malicious sites and to sites displaying inappropriate or nonproductive materials, based on URL categories.
- Anti Malware: Stopping malware on the edge significantly decreases the possibility that a virus will hit a computer with anti-virus signatures that are not up-to-date or a test computer without an anti-virus to protect it.
- Network Inspection System (NIS): NIS is a generic application protocol decode-based traffic inspection system that uses signatures of known vulnerabilities, to detect and potentially block attacks on network resources.
- HTTPS scanning [enables] inspection of encrypted sessions, eased the deployment and management with a set of easy to use wizards and significantly improved logging and reporting to provide full visibility into how your organization is accessing the web and whether it’s compliant with your organization’s policy.
- VPN, Firewall, Email Protection and Infrastructure - We have also made significant investments to ensure that we keep delivering top notch VPN and Firewall functionality.”
Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 RTM is available for download here.