Quick questions: In a firewall, if you're presented with a checkbox asking if you want to block requests with ambigious extensions, what would you do? I'm guessing the answer from 99% of you would be "of course, I want to be as secure as I can be". Well, read on. Maybe you won't want to check that box...

http://www.microsoft.com/isaserver/2006/default.mspx is worth checking out - you can download the beta of ISA Server 2006. I can't download it myself as I'm off-site, but will be sure to install it at home in the next couple of weeks...

You may have spotted I haven't posted for a few days, but I've been off ill with the 'flu. Hence, my excuse for not having spotted the availability of ISA Server 2004 SP2 last week. It's also worth mentioning Maartens excellent blogcast on the features. ISA Server 2004 SP2 Site (for download links...

For those of you who were unable to attend IT Forum 2005 in November, a quick reminder that there are two full-day events re-running some of the most popular content. This will be held on the Microsoft Campus in Reading. The registration links are below - I know they are close to filling up, but if you...

If you've been watching the series on RPC/HTTP I recorded a little while back, you'll know that I did a "trick" to allow both OWA and RPC/HTTP connectivity through a single external IP Address under ISA Server 2004. There was an annoying flaw which although caused no problem directly, caused ISA Server...

I've been running ISA Server at home for a number of years now - first with ISA 2000, and more recently ISA Server 2004 SP1. I've realised over time that there are many false alerts of port scans, and know that most times, they are false. However, there's an interesting article here which goes into a...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. The final part to the RPC/HTTPS series shows you how to alter the configuration we have such that Outlook 2003 can move seamlessly between external and internal connectivity through the use of integrated authentication. To do this, we need...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. In the last part, forms based authentication for Outlook Web Access was back running again, bouncing through the localhost listener. In this part, we put RPC/HTTP back into place. We create a publishing rule for the Exchange Virtual Directory...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. We now move Outlook Web Access back to HTTPS, and we correct a naming error on the Network Listener "FBA LocalHost 443" in the last part (it's actually listening and remains listening on port 80). After having ripped things apart over the...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. To make the next steps clearer, here's a picture of what we're trying to achieve in combining Forms Based Authentication with RPC/HTTP, and the routes through which traffic will flow. Hopefully a picture speaks a thousand words - the blogcast...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. With our new rule in place on the ISA Server, this sixth part of configuring TPC over HTTP for Outlook 2003 first takes a quick look at the effects on Outlook Web Access - we now get a basic authentication challenge instead of Forms Basic...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. This fifth part of configuring RPC over HTTP for Outlook 2003 changes direction in getting RPC/HTTPS available from the Internet now that it is working internally. We backtrack on our ISA Server configuration as we can't (easily) have forms...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. This fourth part of configuring RPC over HTTP for Outlook 2003 moves us on to ensuring that RPC/HTTP works internally from our Outlook 2003 client to our Exchange 2003 Server. First though, we correct a typo in the registry settings from...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. The third part of configuring RPC over HTTP for Outlook 2003 configures the registry on Exchange 2003 and ensures that IIS is correctly configured on our Exchange server. This is a critical step in ensuring that internal problems are non...

Thanks for everyone who attended todays security event in London. I hope you got a lot out of the demonstration I ran through today, plus of course the other sessions. It was certainly the scariest and possibly "riskiest" session I've ever considered - taking on 90 mins+ of unrehursed demo could have...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. The second part of configuring RPC over HTTP for Outlook 2003 connectivity to Exchange 2003 is covered in this blogcast. Now that we have the proxy component installed on the Exchange Server, we have some further configuration to perform...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. By popular demand (so you can all stop emailing me now please!), we're going to tackle the subject of RPC over HTTP in the next 10 or 11 parts. First, I feel it important to set the scene to paint a clearer picture of what we are trying...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. In this blogcast, we complete email retrieval configuration through SMTP transfer. Having seen the ISA logs and network analysis, we configure and apply an appropriate ISA firewall policy, and send an email from the Internet into our organisation...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. This next blogcast raises the bar in terms of email retrieval. In the previous part, we were using POP3 email retrieval, similar to many home users retrieve email from an ISP hosted mailbox. This solution isn't necessarily ideal for business...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. Unlucky 13 for some - it certainly was for me, I had to record it three times and still had problems along the way! Oh, the joys of real world "live" computing! Anyway, now that we can send email externally from our Active Directory/Exchange...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. Hot off the headphones, so to speak - literally just recorded. This blogcast goes through a typical scenario in a small/medium organisation where an ISP's SMTP server is used to send outbound email. If you've been watching the series so...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. In this blogcast, we do a simple re-configuration to our ISA Server to start using the certificate already installed on that machine to allow encryption of traffic used by our external site, mail.contoso.com. After the reconfiguration, we...

Kind of timely to see that a new guide has been published on microsoft.com titled "Application Layer Firewall protection for Exchange 2003 with ISA Server 2004". It tells you much more than I've been demonstrating in the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials recently, so take a look here .

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. Yesterday, we got Outlook Web Access available on the Internet (albeit still using http rather than https - later this week we'll solve that). Our users are currently accessing Outlook Web Access using the URL http://mail.contoso.com/exchange...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. One step closer to making webmail available. In this blogcast, we publish our Outlook Web Access on the Internet, but initially using HTTP rather than HTTPS - the reason for this at this stage is that this gives us the potential to be able...