Microsoft Internet Security Accelerator

Quick and Dirty Primer on Internet Security and Acceleration Server.

What exactly is ISA?
Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration server is a web-cache, virtual private networks and application layer firewall.

For vendor information check out www.microsoft.com/isaserver.
I went to a Microsoft security conference and this is what I picked up.

ISA can inspect traffic coming into your network and also do HTTP filtering. It is designed to look for directory traversing. YOu can customize protocolsand policies based upon your criteria.
ISA allows for better authentication thru RADIUS remote access dial in server. You can also use products from RSA such as secure ID, which I recommend.
VPN's can also be customized thru ISA. VPN's are virtual private networks to allow remote users to access your network thru encrypted tunnels using protocolssuch as IPSec.

Internet Security Accelerator can also be used with Microsoft Exchange server for better security.

Internet Security accelerator allows traffic thru that has been deemed ok by the firewall administrator without additional packet inspection increasing performance of your network.
ISA will also cache webpages to allow faster access over the network.
There are always open source alternatives such as Squid, http://www.squid.org which is a open source proxy. This is just a few notes I took down that I thought I would share with the internet community. I hope this helps with any IT decisions.