I mentioned on this blog a few days ago that TMG beta 3 has been released to the public. If you haven’t had a chance yet to check it out, then make some time today and do it! There are a lot of improvements included in the beta 3 version of the TMG firewall and I think you’re going to like them a lot.

One of the biggest differences you’ll see between beta 2 and beta 3 is the inclusion of the URL filtering feature. If you’ve been watching the bouncing ball, you might now that beta 1 included URL filtering while beta 2 did not. We see it now with beta 3 and it should stay there.

On the surface URL filtering seems fairly simple. You pick the categories of URLs that you want to block (or maybe allow) and then assign the users that you want that allow or block to apply to. BAM! That’s it, right?

That could be it, but there are some details of the URL filtering feature that you might want to know about. For example,

• Where does the database of URLs come from?
• Who makes the decisions regarding categorization of the URLs?
• Are there ways to override the categorizations?
• Can you customize the message delivered to the users when they go to a blocked URL?
• Does the TMG firewall contact a “cloud” based database and if so, does it cache the results to improve performance?

To get the answers to these questions, check out Dotan Elharrar’s blog post on this subject over at the ISA/TMG firewall Team blog over at:

https://blogs.technet.com/isablog/archive/2009/06/...e.aspx

HTH,

Tom

Thomas W Shinder, M.D., MCSE
Sr. Consultant / Technical Writer

Prowess Consulting www.prowessconsulting.com
PROWESS CONSULTING | Microsoft Forefront Security Specialist
Email: tshinder@isaserver.org
MVP — Forefront Edge Security (ISA/TMG/IAG)