Newsletter – November 2008

Kazmarek’s Top Tech Gifts for 2008

Kazmarek Technology Solutions is here to help you with your holiday shopping! While we won’t be at your side as you wade through the crowds at the mall on Black Friday, we have compiled a list of tech gift ideas to save you some time. Our engineers have pulled these items from their own wish lists so you can rest assured knowing these gifts will satisfy any geek-at-heart in your own life.

Click the items above for more details. If you have any questions about these products, please feel free to contact KTS today.

Product Spotlight –
Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008

By Shayne Comey

Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008 officially shipped on November 12. This long awaited successor to Small Business Server 2003 has already shown a lot of promise and is packed with many new features.

Windows Small Business Server 2008 is an all-in-one server solution designed to help you keep your data more secure and your company more productive. It provides many of the features used by larger companies, such as e-mail, Internet connectivity, internal Web sites, remote access, support for mobile devices, file and printer sharing, backup, and restore—all at one affordable price.

Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008 now includes Microsoft Exchange Server 2007! Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 product technologies introduce advanced e-mail and calendar functionality to Windows Small Business Server 2008. Exchange Server 2007 delivers a seamless end-user collaboration experience and unparalleled security features.  In addition, the Windows SBS 2008 Remote Web Workplace gives you highly secure access to business contacts, calendars, e-mail, files, and other important desktop resources from any Internet-connected computer.

Windows Small Business Server 2008 allows you to keep your business information secure with daily and weekly reports alerting you on the health and security of your technology infrastructure.  A centralized Security Center keeps your computers and servers current and your network healthy and up to date with the latest security updates. Windows Small Business Server 2008 helps protect your vital business information from loss by backing up the data on your network, and enabling you to recover accidentally deleted files. SBS 2008 also enables you to recover data on your network in the event of disaster.

Technology has always promised to solve problems, not create them. Windows Small Business Server 2008 simplifies business technology and delivers on that promise.

Contact KTS today for further details and to schedule a FREE site survey to see how your business can benefit from Windows Small Business Server 2008.

What’s KTS Up To? 
By Tracy Sales

Microsoft Internet Security & Acceleration Server (ISA) 2006 is a software-based firewall solution from Microsoft.  Recently, KTS had the opportunity to implement an ISA server in a slightly less-than-ordinary configuration that was actually very suitable for the situation.  The implemented configuration has prompted a second look at a product that we had otherwise set aside in favor of hardware based solutions.

Traditionally, industry experts (KTS included) have recommended an appliance-based firewall device to serve as your first layer of protection for internet-facing systems.  Admittedly, KTS has been reluctant to recommend Microsoft’s software firewall solution because of its dependency on the Windows Server OS.  This dependency means that your firewall will have many extraneous services and applications running that could be used as an attack point for would be hackers.  

While the dependency on the server OS causes some security risk, we can still use many of the less-known features of the product to really make it a beneficial piece for an organization’s remote workforce.  And, by getting creative, we don’t have to hang the ISA server out in the open where its extraneous services can be attacked either.  Our recent work with ISA server focused on providing a more-secure solution for remote users to access Outlook Web Access and Outlook Anywhere services.  By funneling the traffic for these services through the ISA server, we were able to provide a secure layer between the Internet and the Exchange server so that the necessary Exchange services are not directly exposed.  In our configuration, all traffic passed through a front-end firewall appliance.  Certain ports were allowed and redirected to the ISA server which was located in the DMZ.  The ISA server then allowed traffic only through explicit ports to the internal Exchange server.  Click on the thumbnail image to the right for a view of the network topology used. 

We found that ISA Server 2006 had many powerful tools to make publishing the Exchange Server 2007 components easy.  The ISA Server included many templates for publishing Microsoft servers and boasted these server publishing features:

• Support for SSL Services – The ISA server can act as an SSL proxy and even has the ability to decrypt SSL packets and re-encrypt them before submitting them to the appropriate server.
• Port and Path Redirection / Link Translation – Allows for flexibility, the hosting of multiple services on port 80 or 443, and simple URLs for the end user.
• Single Sign-on – Allows for single log-in session when accessing multiple web services.
• Forms based authentication – Allows for a customizable graphical login screen for all web services.  ISA 2006 even includes templates for familiar web services, such as Outlook Web Access 2003 and 2007, so your users see a login screen they are already familiar with.  You can also add your company logo to these screens for a bit of personalization.

Contact KTS today to find out how the latest technology solutions
can benefit your business.