“Microsoft leapt into the network security market this week with
the Valentine’s Day introduction of its Internet Security and
Acceleration (ISA) Server — a network firewall that will compete
in the same arena as Check Point’s FireWall-1 and Network
Associates’ Gauntlet.”
“ISA Server includes integrated intrusion detection and Web
proxying, among other features. The company says the firewall
survived hacker penetration tests, and performed reliably in a
public beta period that began last June. According to a
Microsoft technical report, ISA Server even protects the company’s
corporate network, which handles a whopping forty thousand client
computers accessing over forty million Internet URLs every
day.”
“Of course, that last part would be more impressive had
Microsoft’s corporate network not suffered a widely publicized
intrusion last October. Then, earlier this month, the software
giant got another security black eye when a distributed denial of
service attack knocked its Web properties offline and it had to go
running to Akamai for succor. And this week saw the Kournikova
e-mail virus sweep through Windows machines, while Web vandals
gleefully defaced the New York Times, Intel, Compaq and other sites
by exploiting security holes in Microsoft’s IIS Web server.”