ISA server to Microsoft Forefront

[Techknowledge]

Hello All,

I'm getting involved with networking and security. One of the products that I wish to learn about is MS ISA Server. Nevertheless, I just heard about MS Forefront. Should I skip learning ISA and jump to Forefront instead. Is ISA dead now and sooner or later Forefront will be the product of choice. What's the difference between the two anyways?

Thanks

 

[SecurityTheatre]

Many security people I know roll their eyes when they hear "Microsoft ISA". That is not to say it's worthless, but for what it does, it is a niche product. Basically, a mediocre antivirus gateway combined with a mediocre firewall that is tailored to front-end for Exchange (and formerly SharePoint), but can be shoehorned into doing a few other things.

And ISA is now called "Forefront Management Gateway" or something like that. Though, off the top of my head, it's not identical to the main Forefront Release (not sure there).

I always ask people what their goals are when installing ISA, because there are other products that do everything it does, and do it better.

 

[Techknowledge]

So what would be an advice for home users proxy and firewall product where I can filter what websites to visit or not, and what would be a good product recommendation for an organization to use?

 

[JBT]

Smoothwall or ipcop possibly?