A quick note: if you happen to be in the New York area tomorrow, November 19th, you might be interested in the Amazon Web Services Summit taking place at the Javits Convention center where you will see our products in action along with many other innovative and amazing things. (If you cannot physically attend, they plan to offer streaming for several tracks as well. See below.)

Let's look at the two primary efforts we have made around integrating with Amazon. While it might look like a lot of acronyms, you'll quickly get the hang of it. They (and we!) have many products, and every product has some abbreviation. The first is the ability to run a hosted Astaro Security Gateway within the Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2). To accomplish this, we have built, uploaded, and will now maintain Amazon Machine Images (AMI’s) of our Astaro Security Gateway 8.300+ and Astaro Command Center 3.0+, along with our upcoming Sophos UTM9 release which is available now as public beta to be released in July.

EC2 allows you to take advantage of the massive Amazon infrastructure and make the act of hosting an ASG purely about the software; you don’t need to worry about available bandwidth, redundancy, or hardware failures. There is no need to ship appliances, rack-mount hardware, or deal with cabling. Just activate (launch) an ASG within the EC2, and literally within minutes you have an ASG of any size you need ready for work. EC2 is basically a big datacenter where users can activate “images” (similar to a virtualization platform you might build on your own hardware) and then pay only for the resources & bandwidth your Amazon Machine Images consume. Amazon provides very detailed billing for all activity, and you can run reports down to the penny which show precise resource usage at any time so you are not surprised by any costs with an unexpected bill at the end of a period. We have observed ASG 220-sized instances consuming anywhere from $30-$250 per month, but this directly depends on the installation and how it is used.
In summary, you can activate an ASG within EC2 and then use it like a hosted virtual machine. Partners can connect branch offices to it using our unmatched RED and Wireless products, meaning their customers can avoid having extra infrastructure at their “main” site. Engineers are frequently using Amazon ASG's for testing and demo purposes as well. With a reliable, scalable ASG running in EC2, the use cases and chances to innovate in solving customer problems are almost endless. I'd invite you to share your successes in our forums at www.astaro.org.

 The other thing we’ve added is completely different - A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) connector within ASG itself. To quickly simplify VPC, it gives you a “piece” of the Amazon cloud to launch your servers in securely, separated in your own private IP space. The problem we wanted to solve by adding a VPC connector into ASG is that VPC  requires a customer to have a way “get” to it from their business in order to access whatever they have chosen to run there. This could be mail servers, file servers, or virtually any kind of hosted machine. To do this securely, you need a hardware VPC using a costly and complex product from some larger networking companies, along with the technical knowledge to configure the required BGP routing (to dual redundant gateways) in order to create a connection to VPC. It is not possible to use a very simple, single IPSec VPN tunnel. Our VPC connector lets you download a single file from Amazon and upload it into your local ASG, which then builds the connection to your VPC automatically. You do not need to know anything about advanced routing, complex multi-homed IPSec tunnels, or anything about how the inner workings of VPC operate. If you can enter a name and password or click to upload a configuration file, you can join your ASG to your VPC and be securely accessing your files in minutes.  Our VPC connector is all about using your existing ASG located at your business to connect to the Amazon VPC, turning a technical and expensive process into something very simple, and best of all free! You read that right: we’ve included our Amazon VPC connector as part of the Astaro Essential Firewall which is fully free for business use.

Now if you wish to go one step further for the ultimate in cloud-hosted protection and connectivity, launch an ASG within EC2, use the connector to join it to your VPC, and then connect from your office(s) to your ASG using Astaro RED (and Wireless with it!). There is less to configure, less to deploy, and new sites can be brought online by drop-shipping a RED & access point. To get started, you can sign up for Amazon Web Services, use our ASG-EC2 getting started guide (see below), and then follow our other guide to set up your own Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (again, see below) and connecting to it with your ASG (hosted in EC2 or at your own site on hardware/software/virtual appliance). All Astaro AMI's come with 30 days of full access, and you can request evaluation units and license keys for longer periods.

Useful Links: 

• Amazon ASG EC2 Getting Started Guide
• Amazon ASG VPC Getting Started Guide
• Amazon Web Services Summit New York 2012 (April 19th) Live Stream Registration
• Astaro RED Overview
• Contact Astaro for evaluation and other information

Astaro Security Gateway Up2Date 8.302 Information

News:

• Addressed connection issues with Swisscom DSL

Remarks:

• System will be rebooted

Fixes:

• [20573] Problems with PPPoE with Swisscom DSL

Download:
Link: ftp.astaro.de/ASG/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.302.tgz.gpg
Size: 123KB
MD5: 283d9427cba1395d14ef147870ce57b2

Up2Date Installation:
Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an already-downloaded Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

	Astaro Security Gateway Up2Date FTP Mirrors:

 Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.302] Using Multiple Internet Links").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Angelo Comazzetto
UTM Product Manager

We were pretty impressed by your the creativity and the tough competition at the end of the count down.

Your votes are now in and the champions are set. Take a look here to see the winning monsters and all the other great entries!

The seven product families Unified, Web, Email, Endpoint, Mobile, Network and Data are now united below the Sophos brand with White as the main color theme. Our corresponding white booth at CeBIT within the IT-Security hall attracted thousands of visitors during the five day fair. In addition to business talks at the demo stations, which were occupied all the day, the booth also attracted the masses due to its entertainment program such as expert’s talks and the large Complete-Security-Bridge, built from 200.000 bricks. VIP visitors like the Vice President of the European Commission, Nellie Kroes, and a delegation of the Russian ministry of Education underlined the growing importance of Sophos in the IT security market. UTM meets endpoint is gathering speed. If you want to get some impressions of the event visit our Facebook page.

It was especially pleasing for us to greet so many new (and familiar) faces and open the IT security "Complete Security" chapter. As always, we would like to offer you some impressions from the events. Below you can see some pictures in a slideshow.

According to the report, “The Leaders quadrant contains vendors at the forefront of making and selling UTM products that are built for midsize business requirements. The requirements necessary for leadership include a wide range of models to cover midsize business use cases, support for multiple features, and a management and reporting capability that's designed for ease of use. Vendors in this quadrant lead the market in offering new safeguarding features, and in enabling customers to deploy them inexpensively without significantly affecting the end-user experience or increasing staffing burdens.

These vendors also have a good track record of avoiding vulnerabilities in their security products. Common characteristics include reliability, consistent throughput, and a product that's intuitive to manage and administer.” Sophos UTM eliminates the complexity of deploying and managing a variety of point solutions to secure businesses against viruses, spam and hackers. It combines essential security solutions within a single flexible appliance, providing centralized control through an easy-to-use console. And in response to growing customer needs, Sophos recently introduced UTM cloud capabilities via the Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), enabling customers to easily host and run server infrastructure in a secure, scalable cloud. Gartner states that: “especially under the current economic conditions, most SMBs have strong IT budgetary and staffing constraints. This causes them to highly value ease of deployment and use, strong local channel support, and flexible pricing.”

To download a complimentary copy of this report, please click here.

Many exciting new features have been added; we have extended onto the desktop with Endpoint Protection, Wireless Protection has a new captive portal system which is perfect for hotels & coffee shops, and a jaw-dropping HTML5 VPN Portal for true clientless access makes its debut as well. Full details on the UTM 9 Public Beta, (along with download links and license keys) can be found here in our community forums. A brief overview of some notable things you might be waiting for can be viewed by reading on. 

Sophos UTM 9 At A Glance
Major New Features

• Endpoint Protection
• Wireless Captive Portals
• HTML5 VPN Portal
• Sophos Anti-Virus Engine
• New WebAdmin GUI Look

Minor New Features

• Apple iOS Support for WebAdmin
• YouTube for Schools
• 1:1 NAT Rules
• New Appliance LCD Functions
• HA/Clustering Cold-Standby During Up2Date
• Constant Live-Log Button
• Customizable Dashboard
• New Listbox Functionality
• Network Definition Ranges
• Download and Distribution of User VPN Configurations
• Multiple Objects in Firewall Rules

There are many more new things for you to see and test (over 100 in fact), and I invite you to create and vote for features at our  feature request site, your idea could change the product and benefit others! On behalf of myself, the Network Security Group, and all of Sophos, enjoy the Beta of UTM 9 and be sure to share your results in our forums.

Angelo Comazzetto

"We found deployment to be fairly easy with help from an initial setup wizard. The wizard is launched from a web browser once the appliance is connected to the network. This utility will help in creating the initial network settings of the appliance, as well as establish a base configuration of the security policy. At the completion of the wizard, all further administration and management is done via the web-based interface of the appliance. We found this to be well-organized and intuitive to navigate." Get the full article here!

For: Full-featured security gateway with many deployment and configuration options.
Against: None that we found.
Verdict: A solid product that is feature rich and well worth your short list.

This release contains a number of fixes around VPN, Web Security, and wireless. 

Astaro Security Gateway Up2Date 8.301 Information
News:

• Several bug fixes for IPsec VPN
• Several bug fixes for Web Filter
• IRQd restarting often has been fixed

Remarks:

• System will be rebooted
• Configuration will be upgraded
• Connected Wireless AP's will perform a firmware upgrade

Fixes:

• [19482] Data transfer over L2TP VPN breaks after a few minutes for Windows clients
• [19740] Downloads larger than the max. scanning size with chunked encoding break if AntiVirus is enabled
• [19806] Web Filter: iPhone/iPad exception for Youtube doesn't match
• [19914] Can't select 2012 as custom time frame in Logging & Reporting >> View Log Files >> Search Log Files
• [20102] WiFi: Connection problems for clients using powersaving

Download:
Link: ftp.astaro.de/ASG/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.301.tgz.gpg
Size: ~90MB
Md5: fdd007446fbad7b8553b6b91f806ea68

Up2Date Installation:
Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an already-downloaded Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

	Astaro Security Gateway Up2Date FTP Mirrors:

 Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.301] Amazon VPC Connector").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Angelo Comazzetto
Product Manager

Brilliant white is the perfect color for symbolizing a successful start into a new era based on Complete Security. This visual modification is the next step in growing together with Sophos and ensures that we can present a recognizable brand to you under the Sophos banner. As far as the website goes, you will have no difficulty in navigating to your favorite places because the site structure is exactly the same as before.

There will be more updates to come and we will keep you posted right here!

ACC Up2Date V3.002 Information

News

-This is a maintenance release

Remarks:
-System will be rebooted
-Configuration will be upgraded

Fixes:
-[20087] ACC loses Confd connection after session timeout
-[20107] Worldmap does not work due to old mapstraction version
-[20108] Fix library dependencies after apl update (Reporting now uses GD.pm)

Download link:
http://ftp.astaro.de/ACC/v3/up2date/u2d-sys-3.002.tgz.gpg
MD5: 26005022fe45c5b0e6c8a280e77eaf98 
Size: ~23MB

**Important Licensing Note**: ACC Version 3 now uses our the newer-style licensing model we released in 2010 for our ASG products. While ACC remains totally free, this means your existing V2 ACC key from the MyAstaro.com portal is longer valid, nor is any outstanding static keys from the time when we only offered a single key for all installations. To get your new ACC 3.0 key, fill out the creation form on our website. Your personalized license will then be available via the License Management section of your MyAstaro account.

	Astaro Command Center FTP Mirrors:

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ACC V3 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[3.002] Central Backup Creation Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also an ACC demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Angelo Comazzetto

The Potential Problems:
In this now merged network we can see employees, visitors/guest with tablets, cell phones, pcs, etc.. We need a way to corral, protect, and prevent. The access point may be a Gateway in a bad way; it could be a "rogue access point". Organizations need to determine how to allow access to the network for known resources while blocking those the company does not want to have access. It's a relationship that goes both ways because devices need "protected" status access to and from the network. The APs should be set up so that no malware should be sent or received, a strong password is established for guests and the guest account password needs to change and be easy to convey. Much has been written about simple passwords for account access. Those simple passwords have found their way to access points as well.

The Solution:
Start with the who, what, where and how list.
Ask yourself:
Who needs access? Employees, contractors, guests, those people slowly driving by in their car?
The answer:
Employees get WPA-*.* tied to their Ldap Account which equals authentication, encryption, and allowed destinations. Contractors may have a temporary account linked to another SSID with a similar set up as employees.
Guest and those who are just driving by: What do they get? We know the new 802.11n standard registers some impressive distances.

What needs access?
PCs, tablets, wifi enabled-phones

Where do they(s) need to go?
Printers, Servers, the Internet (with or without filtering). Those guests might need access back to their corporate network.

How are they going to be allowed?
Through Firewall Rules,Web Filter, AV filter, etc.,

So with this short list you can plan, design and execute a Wifi policy that make sense and is enforceable. In our audit required world we need to prove the policy through logging and reporting as well. But that is a subject for another post.

If everyone has access through these networks than it’s probably not that secure. Who then bares the responsibility of securing the customers? I believe the responsibility is shared with the business offering the Wi-Fi connection and the customer who would like to frequent said establishments. From a business side, selecting the right security network device is essential as is selecting the right Wireless Access Point.

Business can look at many security solutions. When looking to secure your Wi-Fi network, I would look at solutions that can service my perimeter, internal and Wi-Fi network. Security companies such as Fortinet, and Astaro (now a Sophos company) provide secure wireless. For instance, Astaro provides a Unified Threat Management (UTM) System that can protect your business from the perimeter all the way down to your internal infrastructure then to your Wi-Fi Network. Astaro has access points, an AP10 and AP30, that directly connect to your Astaro Security Gateway. The Astaro access points can create up to 8 SSIDs. Businesses can then create a wireless security zone for themselves and a separate security zone for their customers. Everyone that connects to these access points, communication over-the-air is encrypted. The access points are directly connected to the ASG so traffic is always inspected coming into or out of the Wi-Fi Network.

Consumers must also be aware of security threats to their personal and financial files stored on their Smartphones. If you have an unlimited data plan, then why turn on your wi-fi? For those who don’t have an unlimited plan, make sure you do have some security software on your Smartphones. Companies like Symantec, Sophos, and Norton offer such protection. They will help you be secured with antivirus software clients to prevent the loss of data and services to malware. This will be important for those of you consumers checking your bank accounts on your mobiles this holiday season.

News:
-This is a maintenance release

Remarks:
-System will be rebooted
-Configuration will be upgraded

Fixes:
[18822] Confd clients may miss storage changes
[19649] Devices without configuration feature let accd run into a deadlock
[na] Various Gateway Manager fixes

Download Links:
Size: 62.7MB
MD5: c8b9ed5aa0089a53cd3614be4e6de402
http://ftp.astaro.de/ACC/v3/up2date/u2d-sys-3.001.tgz.gpg

**Important Licensing Note**: Version 3 now uses our the newer-style licensing model we released in 2010 for our ASG products. This means your existing ACC key from the MyAstaro portal is longer valid, nor is any outstanding static keys from the time when we only offered a single key for all installations. To get your new ACC 3.0 key, fill out the creation form on our website. Your personalized license will then be available via the License Management section of your MyAstaro account.
 

	Astaro Command Center FTP Mirrors:

 Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ACC V3 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[3.001] Central Backup Creation Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also an ACC demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Angelo Comazzetto
ACC Product Manager

They have challenged you to put a face to the dangers of the Internet using Lego or Duplo bricks. All you need to do it build your very own malware monster, take a photo and upload it on their site. Visitors can vote in the gallery until the end of February and the most popular entries win a prize including a Nintendo DSi!

You can find the promotional site here!

The evolution of online attacks seems to mirror the progression advertising has taken. In the beginning, hacking was done for fun and hackers were driven by a spirit of adventure. However, some hackers soon realized the potential for personal financial gain their hacking created. Thus the birth of Trojan Horses, keyloggers, and malware distributed via spam messages. Much like television commercials of old, these attacks were broadly distributed; the strategy being to hit as many people as possible in the hopes a small percentage will download the malware.  In general this shotgun type strategy was successful as unsuspecting victims would click on malicious links and had their account information, passwords, or identity sent to a hackers developing databases.  Black-hat hackers could focus on quickly creating simple, and often times, low quality malware and due to the sheer distribution volume this method was profitable.

Just as we are seeing an increase in personalized targeted advertising, we are now seeing the rise of targeted attacks.  In the past this method of hacking was considered unprofitable as it took too long to create a targeted attack, thus reducing the profit margin.  With the lowering cost of producing high quality malware, large customer database breaches, coupled with the surge in hacktivism means we will begin seeing more targeted attacks in the future. 

While the goals of criminal gangs and hacktivists may differ (profit vs. issues awareness), they are using similar tactics – malicious code designed for a specific targeted attack.  The reason for the coming rise in targeted attacks is twofold:
1) targeting certain types of businesses has become a profitable endeavor and
2) social issues are once again spurring hackers into action.

Why is it now profitable to target specific account when it once was not considered a lucrative strategy?  One reason may be the success security professionals have had with educating employees and technology users regarding online threats. It isn’t that the creation of high quality malware has become easier, it is that getting users to fall for their scams has become more difficult, making broad based attacks less profitable. As a result, hackers are finding it more profitable to target a specific company or organization with an attack designed to steal data.  These attacks are harder to defend against as they often involve rather sophisticated social engineering approaches and often times are harder for common email spam scanners or content filters to detect. They depend on SQL injections and the infection of web applications or common social media sites such as Facebook rather than spam or malicious websites.

On the other side of the spectrum are hacktivists who are targeting a specific organization, not for profit but for social awareness. These socially minded hackers know that a high profile security breach can damage the reputation of a socially irresponsible organization or bring down the network of a company the hacktivist feels is responsible for some injustice. It is the technological equivalent of protesting outside of the organization’s office and even more effective as it can quickly generate a global media buzz online when successful.

The number of targeted attacks will only increase in 2012 as users become more aware of broad based threats, hacktivists become more active and black-hat hackers create more sophisticated malware.  For the general consumer and business watching for these new approaches and taking control of your security policy enforcement should be a focus for your New Year’s resolutions.

ASG 8.300 Feature Summary:

Amazon Machine Images (AMI) for ASG (and ACC)
    As mentioned in our earlier technical preview, you can now launch and run Astaro Security Gateway inside Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2). Already we are seeing creative uses of this deployment method with partners using their cloud-based ASG to connect our RED product, and then extending their branches further by adding our Access Points to those devices - all managed centrally from their Amazon ASG. Let us know via a post at our UBB at www.astaro.org how it works for you, and how you are (or plan) to use it for your business - we are always interested in use cases! To locate the ASG AMI's, go to the community AMIs tab and search for "ASG". (A full deployment tutorial will be available at GA)

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Connector
 The Amazon VPC service allows you to host and run your server infrastructure in a secure, scalable cloud. Our VPC connector gives you a permanent, encrypted connection to your VPC resources right from ASG. The back end for this uses our new BGP routing to redundant Amazon gateways, and is done automatically without you needing to know anything about BGP or the Amazon technical parameters for doing it manually (or with more complex products). A guide will be available at GA release to assist you in connecting to your VPC.

Support for Astaro Wireless AP50
Our new Wireless AP50 product is finished production and will be available very soon. You will need to be at ASG V8.300+ to use this product. With 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz bands, dual high-gain antennas, and Gigabit ethernet, this is our biggest and most capable wireless product, perfect for bigger environments or locations where the 2.4Ghz band is cluttered with interference. You can get more information from the Astaro Access Points section on our Website.

Site-to-Site VPN using RED Protocol
We have added the ability to make tunnels between ASG devices using our much-heralded RED tunnel technology*. This operates similarly to how site-site over SSL works, you setup one ASG as the "Main" office (Server) and connect to them from other ASG sites as the "Client". Some quick steps to begin:

• At the Main Site: 
  
  • Go to "WebAdmin-->RED Management-->[Server]Client Management Tab"
  • Add a RED, enter a name and pick type "ASG". Click Apply.
  • Download the .red provisioning file which is created.
• On the Remote ASG you wish to connect:
  
  • Go to "WebAdmin-->RED Management-->[Client]Tunnel Management"
  • Add a tunnel, create (or select) a definition for the Hostname of the Main ASG and supply the provisioning file you downloaded from the Main ASG
  • The tunnel will now be created.
• Now that you have a tunnel, you must to setup things manually. You will find hardware interfaces you can use to create a Network Interface in the ASG's, select IP ranges to be used, and otherwise manually configure the connectivity. This was originally designed for a special use case; you have however surprised us with your interest in this feature. So, we plan to have a more guided setup within WebAdmin for using RED for a site-site VPN with ASG's in a future Up2Date.
   *This will NOT turn your remote ASG into a RED terminal. It will still have a GUI and work like a normal Site-Site VPN does.

BGP4 Routing Support
ASG now has the ability to do Border Gateway Protocol Routing (BGP). You will find the configuration for this in WebAdmin at "Interfaces & Routing-->Border Gateway Protocol". A specialized routing protocol with specific applications, you should make use of this feature only if you know what you are doing.

Minor Adjustments

•  The Astaro Authentication Agent (AAA) has by popular request been made available as an MSI package as well as an EXE. You will find both on the Client Authentication section in WebAdmin. Enjoy your mass roll-outs of the AAA!
•  Saved Web Reports have been to school and now remember how info was sorted when you saved them
•  The printable configuration engine has also been educated on how to properly display big blocks of text without going outside the lines and now looks much better
•  You can now see and sort application rules by the groups you create
•  Notifications have had "select-all" boxes added, saving you from having to click dozens of times to select what you want
•  You can now create Web Security Reports from Pre-8.2 Logs, see Support-->Advanced-->Weblog Import
•  The Wireless Access Points Grouping section now has an apply button like the rest of WebAdmin, and no longer resets your selections between clicks as a result.

Astaro Security Gateway Up2Date 8.300 Information
News:

• Added: Amazon VPC connector
• Added: Wifi AP50 support
• Added: BGP4 support
• Added: RED ASG-to-ASG tunel
• Fixed: VLAN and PPPoE over bridge are now subject to packet filter

Remarks:

• System will be rebooted
• Configuration will be upgraded
• Connected Wifi APs will perform firmware upgrade
• Connected RED devices may perform firmware upgrade
• Amazon Machine Images for ASG/ACC available in the community AMI tab of Amazon Web Services

Fixes:

• [16884] Confd should reject IP addresses with leading zeros
• [17199] RAS addresses are never removed from back end group network objects
• [18581] QoS limits maximum packet size to 2047
• [18600] Web Security reporting: scheduled reports might always be empty
• [18728] SMTP Proxy can't send any email when special characters are used in BATV secret

Download Details:
ASG Up2Date Package
Size: ~134MB
Md5: 4eb7c6533b9f393050756c40ac350fcf
Download link: http://ftp.astaro.de/ASG/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.300.tgz.gpg

ASG Hardware Appliance ISO
Size: ~531MB
MD5: b15a06d21e3edaea730ee2d132a722679
Download: http://ftp.astaro.de/ASG/v8/hardware_appliance/iso/ssi-8.300-13.1.iso

ASG Software Appliance ISO
Size: ~530MB
MD5: 701853cb46670dcc2f10bbea4171282e
Download link: http://ftp.astaro.de/ASG/v8/software_appliance/iso/asg-8.300-13.1.iso

VMware ESX
Size: ~1.4GB
MD5: e433f32e2a578a296ed9feebd78bcab8 
Download: http://ftp.astaro.de/ASG/v8/virtual_appliance/asg-8.300-esx-v4.zip

VMware Player
Size: ~1.4GB
MD5: 7b2f59dd419eb4301e82ffc2cd841d5d 
Download: http://ftp.astaro.de/ASG/v8/virtual_appliance/asg-8.300-vmware.zip

*(Astaro Smart Installer Images will be updated to 8.3 and published within the next few days)

Up2Date Installation:
Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an already-downloaded Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced: 

	Astaro Security Gateway Up2Date FTP Mirrors:

 Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.300] Running ASG with Amazon EC2").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Angelo Comazzetto
ASG Product Manager

Resolution No. 1: I will not access the Internet without up to date malware protection and an installed firewall and antivirus

Why? Last year150,000 malware attacks were registered* daily! If only everybody would install sufficient security software, this threat would be minimalized.

Insider-Tip: Complete home network protection doesn’t need to cost big bucks. Secure your own network for free with our software!

Resolution No. 2: I will not click on tinyURLs, hyperlinks or links of unknown origin without investigating first.

Why? Even if you think you know the sender or the site, this won’t guarantee your safety. 80% of these URLs stem from former legitimate pages, which were either hacked or infected.

Insider-Tip: Computer and security threats made easy! Learn more about what is out there in our threatsaurus! (PDF)

Resolution No. 3: I will update my security software package regularly and with a watchful eye!

Why? Fake antivirus software and SEO poisoning are the number one way malware is spread. Therefore stay alert and don’t blindly install updates, make sure they are from your provider. Otherwise, you are opening the door for new security breaches.

Insider Tip: Take the threat detection test. Download our free computer security scan!

Resolution No. 4: I will not wait until my laptop is stolen or lost before I encrypt data!

Why? Loss or theft of hardware makes up 30% of all data loss scenarios. Do your best to physically protect your hardware, but also make sure information is encrypted in case these precautions fail.

Insider-Tipp: Quick and easy encryption for all your data. Download our free tool here!

Resolution No. 5: I will stop using “password” as my password

Why? In 2011, passwords such as “password”, “123456”, “qwerty” and “abc123” were still topping the most used passwords list*. Moreover, 67% of all mobile device users haven’t installed any password protection at all. A secure password can go a long way towards protecting your data.

Insider-Tip: Simple tips for better security. Take a look at this video about the perfect password! 

* Sources: Sophos Security Threat Report Mid-Year 2011, Data Loss DB, TNS

Furthermore, the new Japanes datasheets can be found here: http://www.astaro.com/ja-jp/resources/datasheets

Installing small UTM appliances at every site provided sufficient security, but was expensive and very labour-intensive to manage. At the same time, simple VPN-Gateways lacked important security functions that your company couldn't do without. Furthermore, both solutions required a visit from a technician for installation. With Astaro RED, these problems are now a thing of the past. Find out how you can handle this situation in an easy way:

• Connect your remote location in less than 2 minutes

• Complete UTM security at your branch office

• Total cost of ownership is reduced by up to 80%

• Quality products made in Germany

Learn about the advantages of the Astaro RED in our free live Webinar at December 14th and see for yourself how easy it can be to connect remote sites to your headquarters. Sign up today! Use this unique opportunity to your advantage and discuss Astaro RED live with our experts! Register now!

Astaro Security Gateway Up2Date 8.203 Information
News:

• SMTP Proxy: Reduced strictness of RDNS check to earlier (V8.1) behavior
• SMTP Proxy: Added configuration option to use the "strict" RDNS checks
• Reporting/Accounting: Improved database performance and fixed some reported problems
• HTTP Proxy: Various stability improvements

Remarks:

• System will be rebooted
• Configuration will be upgraded

Fixes:

• [19097] Exim RDNS check behavioral change between 8.1x and 8.2x
• [19241] Firefox updates filling up tmp directory with downloads
• [19597] Trendmicro updates filling up tmp directory with downloads

Download:
Link: ftp.astaro.de/ASG/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.203.tgz.gpg
Size: ~32MB
Md5: e45bd9805e15c791a26fd6daadce6062

Up2Date Installation:
Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an already-downloaded Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

	Astaro Security Gateway Up2Date FTP Mirrors:

 Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.203] RED Deployment Helper").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Angelo Comazzetto
ASG Product Manager

The videos that came in were very creative and we enjoyed them very much. Now that the competition has closed, the votes are in and we have our winners (click to view their entry):

1. Eddie Cardona from United States
2. Axel Hoffmann from Germany
3. Stefan Augustin from Germany
4. Daniela Kuenstler from Germany
5. Taylor Cole-Lovelace from United States

Congratulations to all our winners, we will contact you shortly about your prize.

You may still view the rest of the submissions here. Thanks to everyone for taking part.

As a result the organizers want to create effective defenses against the more and more frequent attacks at IT infrastructures. “Think Big” seems to be the slogan of this occasion which even is very helpful due to organizational issues on a nationwide scale. But while LÜKEX might help the government to analyze potential weaknesses amid the big players, the real challenge starts right at the endpoint: Without securing networks of end-users at home and business LÜKEX and Co. are not worth a thing. Therefor we will use the current event as an opportunity to announce the “1st Strategic Crisis Exercise on how to make your wireless networks unbreakable” today and teach LÜKEX the ins and outs! Just keep 6 ways to strengthen your wireless network’s protection in mind. Your IT-land needs you!

The AP50 is a dual-band/dual-radio wireless access point that operates in both the 2.4 and 5 GHz WLAN frequency bands and features: 

• 802.11 a/b/g/n support
• 300 Mbits throughput
• PoE+ compatibility
• Gigabit Ethernet interface
• Support for up to 50 users

The AP50 provides fast and reliable WLAN for more flexibility and is less vulnerable to interference, even in congested environments. The dual-band/radio capability can be segmented by frequency. This means users who require fast and seamless connection with little interference may use the 5 GHz network; while others may use the 2.4 GHz spectrum. This type of segmentation optimizes performance and delivers the best user experience possible. Be the first to find out when the new AP50 is available.

Sign up here and we will send you an email directly notifying you about availability!

With the release of Astaro Security Gateway V8.2 a few months ago, we celebrated by running a competition where users could win an Apple iPad2. Over five thousand people tried their luck, but there could only be one!

And that "one" is Mr. Alexander Schapeit (pictured right) from Tenovis Direct GmbH who was lucky enough to be selected at random to claim the prize.

We not only wish him much fun with his iPad2, but also would like to thank everyone else for taking part and supporting the new version of Astaro Security Gateway.

We look forward seeing you at the next competition!

Kind regards,
Your Astaro Marketing Team

Hidden dangers of free expression

Social media sites have created a wide awareness of world events and changes, beyond that available from the typical media news outlets. With these new outlets, however, come many hidden dangers for political parties, businesses and individuals, as access to their websites, online profiles, Twitter feeds, contact lists, and business Facebook sites allow for another type of expression by discontented and tech-savvy users. These users, who portray themselves as social advocates for justice and change in society, practice what is called “hacktivism.”

Although many individuals see hacktivism as a relatively benign form of political expression on the Internet, no different than a common street protester holding a sign in front of city hall, the actual act of hacking a user’s account or site is in fact a criminal offense. And the organization affected can suffer dramatic reputation losses, due to negative perceptions by their clients or other companies about their lack of security.

Public relations nightmare

Security for a business’s social media accounts is generally regarded as a low priority for many companies. Access to Twitter feeds or Facebook sites is often given to a marketing team or the new intern who understands the power of reaching customers with these sites.

The danger of these sites, however, is that having access to all of those customers means that communication with them can be greatly affected by the loss of a simple password. Once an account has been compromised, the online presence is quickly tainted by a hacker’s chosen political or social message. These messages, unlike a typical attack against a web server or individual user’s email account, are wide-open and immediately known by the online community, creating a public relations nightmare exercise (after the account is reclaimed) on calming users regarding the security of their data. After all, if you can’t keep your marketing team’s password secure, how secure can you keep users’ accounts and credit card information?

Protecting your accounts and servers

Mitigating exposure of your accounts and systems to hacktivism (or hacking in general) should always be part of a comprehensive security strategy. A few important parts to this strategy:

• Access to social media accounts such as Facebook or Twitter feeds via your corporate account should be limited to specific personnel and governed by a policy of password enforcement and rotation.
• To limit downloading of malware (such as key loggers or password grabbers) from your users, a web content filtering system should be used. Such a system will enforce safe website access as well as scan for malware and viruses that could give a hacker account information or remote access to a user’s system.
• Always ensure that web servers and public-facing portals are protected behind an active intrusion-prevention system or web application firewall that actively scans content uploaded or downloaded from your websites.

An effective security policy, with centralized enforcement through the use of a Unified Threat Management system such as the Astaro Security Gateway, will help your organization to avoid becoming a targeted political victim.

General Beta Information
Why Participate?
You get to see and play with things before they are Generally Available, and have a chance to shape features and functionality based on your comments and findings. We closely monitor all our Beta feedback, and over the years have worked hard to listen to our market in order to build products that people like you want to buy. By helping us, we gain insight as to how we are doing and have the chance to identify bugs, polish some features, and make corrections in hundreds of different installation scenarios which is extremely useful to our QA and testing efforts. In return, you get to see things early.
How to be a Beta tester:
No forms, no pesky emails or submission process with a bunch of information to provide -we know that's not fun. Just download the Beta ISO image via our forums (first version is 8.270), burn it to a CD and install it to your appliance or own box. Once you are using the 8.300 Beta, you can Up2Date and install the next Beta releases for 8.300 without needing to re-install. We will release a final Up2Date package at the end of the 8.300 Beta which will take your installation to the GA release of 8.300.
How you can contribute:
During the period of the Beta for 8.300 (which will run until approximately mid-December), we would encourage you to post your impressions, feedback, bug reports, and all the associated things you like (and don't like!) in our Beta forums.

Astaro Beta 8.300 Download Information:
For the first release of the Beta, version 8.270 is the version we'll start with. Future updates and releases will be communicated soley through the forums and not via this blog, so check there often for all the updates and news around V8.300. You will find many answers to early questions, test licenses, and general Beta information there.

Beta 8.300 ISO Download Links (V8.270):

ASG ISO for Software/Virtual appliances (Your own hardware):
Download:  ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/beta/asg-8.270-5.1.iso

SSI ISO for Astaro Hardware appliances (eg. an ASG 220):
Download: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/beta/ssi-8.270-5.1.iso
 

 8.300 Beta Feature Overview
  We might re-work or change features entirely, add new items, and delay things which don't meet our standards.

Major New Things

BGP4 Routing Support
ASG now has the ability to do Border Gateway Protocol Routing. You will find the configuration for this in the Interfaces & Routing section under BGP. A specialized routing protocol with specific applications, you should make use of this feature only if you know what you are doing.

Site-to-Site VPN using RED Protocol
We have added the ability to make tunnels between ASG devices using our much-heralded RED tunnel technology. This operates similarly to how site-site over SSL works;
1.) Login to the main site, go to the RED section, add a RED, and pick type "ASG"
2.) Download the provisioning file which is created
3.) Login to the remote site, go to the Client [Tunnel Management] tab in RED
4.) Add a tunnel, enter the hostname of the ASG and supply the provisioning file you downloaded.
5.) Presto, you'll have a tunnel!
*Note: this will NOT turn your remote ASG into a RED terminal. It will still have a GUI and work like a normal Site-Site VPN does.
*Note 2: We will likely move this feature into the VPN section in a future 8.3 Beta release.

Amazon Machine Images (AMI) for ASG (and ACC)
As mentioned in our early technical preview, you can now launch and run Astaro Security Gateway inside Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud. Already we are seeing creative uses of this deployment method. Let us know how it works for you, and how you are (or plan) to use it for your business - we are always interested in use cases.

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) connector
The Amazon VPC service allows you to host and run your server infrastructure in a secure, scalable cloud. The VPC connector gives you a permanent connection to your VPC resources right from ASG. The back end for this uses the BGP routing to redundant Amazon gateways, and is done automatically without you needing to know BGP or the Amazon technical parameters for doing it manually or with more complex products.

Support for Astaro Wireless AP50
We have a new AP50 product which will soon be available and some select users have gained access to early review units. If/when we have some more available we'll announce how you might get one, for now, if you do have one, you can post your feedback in the dedicated sub-forum. If you don't have one, you can't get one to test...yet.

Minor Adjustments

• You can now create Web Security Reports from Pre-8.2 Logs, see Support-->Advanced-->Weblog Import
• Saved Web Reports have been to school and now remember how info was sorted when you saved them
• The printable configuration engine has also been educated on how to properly display big blocks of text without going outside the lines and now looks much better
• You can now see and sort application rules by the groups you create
• Notifications have had "select-all" boxes added, saving you from having to click dozens of times to select what you want
• The Astaro Authentication Agent (AAA) has by popular request been made available as an MSI package as well as an EXE. You will find both on the Client Authentication section in WebAdmin. Enjoy those mass roll-outs!

Fixed Issues
We have spent a lot of time on stability fixes and enhancements. Here are some of the most prominent current ones:
    [14019] SMTP relay attempts shown as webadmin logins
    [14073] WAF: SSL support for multiple DNS names (subjectAlternativeName certificates)
    [14186] WebAdmin last failed session count doesn't match executive report
    [14782] UTF-8 characters in realname of imported keys are not displayed correctly
    [14820] Virus uploads don't get blocked if XSS or SQL Injection filter (mod_security) is enabled
    [15438] Sortable tables and Batch-Operation use same GUI element
    [15440] Improve input validation for advanced bridge settings
    [15654] Packets mislabeled as connections in reporting
    [15972] Exceptions do not work for Cross Site Scripting, SQL-Injection or Cookie Signing
    [16103] missing table header at NAT and SNAT/DNAT
    [16153] Radius secret containing backtick character (`) doesn't work
    [16255] Exception for Certificate Trust Check does not work in transparent mode
    [16438] Self signed certificate in chain and an exception for all requests going to this category will not work for some banking sites

Enjoy the 8.300 Beta, we eagerly await your feedback.

Angelo Comazzetto
Astaro Product Manager

Firewalls, routers, intrusion prevention systems, web content filters, mail gateways, application servers, authentication servers, host-based intrusion prevention, end point client software.

The list of devices and applications that generate security logs already seems endless, and yet the list continues to grow as new security tools are used in response to the ever-evolving threat landscape. These logs often produce enormous amounts of information and are delivered in a variety of formats making it very difficult to gather useful information or troubleshoot a problem.

Making the situation even more difficult is the fact that many organizations now have remote offices and workers with equipment and logs of their own. These systems and applications must also be monitored to ensure you have consistent security across your organization, and that your remote users and networks aren’t a security weak point that could lead to exploits. Managing, maintaining and making sense of all this information is a daunting task for any organization, but can be especially challenging for smaller organizations with limited budgets and IT resources.

Despite these challenges, an effective log management strategy is a critical piece of any organization’s IT security program, and used properly, log management can help you make better decisions relating to IT resources, purchasing, and the overall security and health of your network.

The enormous amount of information that IT systems generate can be used to fix issues, provide audit trails and baselines, and proactively prevent problems. This information can also be used to maintain or achieve compliance, and storing logs for long periods is often a requirement. How to do so properly is one of the major concerns for any organization implementing a log management program.

Organizations that wish to implement an effective log management strategy need to first define their goals and requirements. Is the goal compliance, problem analysis, network monitoring, IT security? If your goal is just to monitor network equipment and/or troubleshoot security issues, then having IT staff handle log management may suffice. However, if your goal includes all of the above, you may need to split up log management responsibility across different departments or teams to ensure that the proper resources have the information they need.

Once you’ve defined your goals and understand what information is needed and who should be responsible, you can confirm which types of logs are available to fit these needs and what may be missing. This will help you determine if another solution or perhaps some specific information is needed to achieve your goals. Perhaps HR needs to monitor web usage by user name, but that information is not currently available on your web filtering device. It may be that a fairly simple configuration change is needed to gather this information, or it may be necessary to re-evaluate the product you’re using.

Understanding what information is needed will also allow you to start thinking about how much storage space is needed for these logs, and whether it’s acceptable to overwrite old logs once a certain time period has passed.

The next step is to determine what will be done with these logs, how long they’ll be stored, and if there are any special requirements such as encryption. Many logs contain sensitive information such as user names and sometimes even passwords, so securing these logs is a very important consideration. If you’re gathering logs from different locations you’ll also need to ensure that this information is protected while in transit. Once you have the logs, will they be actively monitored for events or should they be stored in case they’re needed? If storing logs for future analysis, thought needs to go into how easily archived information can be gathered.

Once you’ve figured out your goals, responsible parties, and what information is needed, you can start to determine which type of log management solution is best for your organization. Fortunately, there are many different options out there for companies developing their log management infrastructure. A variety of open source and commercial applications can help aggregate and parse logs from different vendors and systems, and new cloud-based solutions can offload tasks such as data security and storage and provide redundancy to protect your data. Choosing the right solution will depend on many factors such as cost, complexity and features, but understanding your goals and needs will help guide you in the decision-making process.

As with any IT initiative, support for an effective log management infrastructure must come from the top, so that everyone in the organization understands and supports the goals. This can help avoid log management becoming the afterthought for an overworked IT staff and can help add real value to the organization.

By becoming an official member of the CSA, Astaro finds itself right at the pulse of technological advancements and is therefore able to influence the UTM development in the best way possible. Moreover, a worldwide opinion pool will enable Astaro to start from the pole position when entering this and is able to create features accordingly for the next generation of UTM gateways. Stay tuned for exciting times ahead!

More information about CSA can be found here.

We've also seen 19,000 new malicious URLs each day in the first half of this year. This makes a new internet threat every 4.5 seconds. Even worse, 80% of those URLs are legitimate websites that were hacked or compromised. Another focus of the survey is the fast growing usage of mobile devices, whose security risks are commonly underestimated by now. Speaking of accessing company resources via mobile devices, Blackberry is number 1 with 73%, Windows (63%), iPhone (57%), Android (48%) and iPad (47%) are following. However, only 69% of the companies have published usage guidelines for company owned mobile devices. Even more alarming is the number as far as private mobile devices of the employees themselves go; Only 31% of the companies publish a proper guideline for this very common scenario.

More information can be found here (You can download the whole report after submitting your name and email address).

**Important Licensing Note**: Version 3 now uses our the newer-style licensing model we released in 2010 for our ASG products. This means your existing ACC key from the MyAstaro portal is longer valid, nor is any outstanding static keys from the time when we only offered a single key for all installations. To get your new ACC 3.0 key, fill out the creation form on our website. Your personalized license will then be available via the License Management section of your MyAstaro account.

ACC Version 3.0 is now running on the same technology platform that powers Version 8 of our flagship Astaro Security Gateway product. This gives us a new, capable base with which to advance ACC with even more functionality for the future. Sporting a massively-upgraded GUI experience, ACC 3.0 now offers on-demand reporting, central backup file management, and support for notifications to alert you during desired events.

1) On Demand (Forensic) Reporting - the reporting section can now be used to run aggregated report queries "as needed" across some/all installations for a desired timeframe. A change from our existing aggregated reporting (which compiles almost instantly but has history and detail limitations), the new ODR can be used to run more detailed queries. This will take a few moments to generate (depending on the amount of installations selected and the time period you require) as the information is fetched and compiled.

2) Central Backup Management - you can now save and work with backup files in ACC, providing not only a safe repository to store your backups, but letting you restore and make backups without logging into WebAdmin. Combined with the new capabilities of ASG 8.200 to remove installation-specific data from backups, admins can easily work with a cookie-cutter type backup which significantly eases implementation of new ASG's which have a shared "base" configuration.

3) Notifications - ACC also now supports notifications, alerting configured administrators of many possible events.

ACC 3.0 Download Information:
Remarks:

• System will be rebooted
• Configuration will be upgraded

News:

• V2 & V3 are based on different backends; an upgrade package is not available
• ACC V2 backup files can be restored into V3

Fixes:

• [18808] Update procedure for global objects is not thread-safe and leads to deadlocks
• [18865] ANY device also resolves devices which haven't backup feateure
• [18957] Notification Refactoring
• [18975] ACC WebAdmin language selection dropdown only shows default value
• [18972] Expand odr create and abort messages
• [18969] Allow only selection of devices which support backup rollout
• [18770] Remove Product upgrade modules (acc3000 branch part)

Download Links:
Below are the links for the ISO image and Astaro Smart Installer for ACC V3. We plan to offer newly-updated VMware Virtual Appliances within the next two weeks.

Software ISO Image
Link: http://ftp.astaro.de/ACC/v3/software_appliance/iso/acc-3.000-10.1.iso
Size: 312.9MB
Md5: 39228469c44207a4ba488065f62fed07

Smart Installer - ASI V1
Link: http://ftp.astaro.de/ACC/v3/software_appliance/smart_installer/v1/acc-3.000-10.1-ASI.zip
Size: 301.7M
MD5: 932adc90163cbeae258aeb4d329715eb

Smart Installer - ASI V2
Link: http://ftp.astaro.de/ACC/v3/software_appliance/smart_installer/v2/acc-3.000-10.1-ASI-V2.zip
Size: 301.9M
MD5: 83f80c7a68dcd5328be03ad8b6748be3 

Once more:
**Important Licensing Note**: Version 3 now uses our the newer-style licensing model we released in 2010 for our ASG products. This means your existing ACC key from the MyAstaro portal is longer valid, nor is any outstanding static keys from the time when we only offered a single key for all installations. To get your new ACC 3.0 key, fill out the creation form on our website. Your personalized license will then be available via the License Management section of your MyAstaro account.
 

	Astaro Command Center FTP Mirrors:

 Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ACC V3 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[3.000] Central Backup Creation Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also an ACC demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Angelo Comazzetto
ACC Product Manager

Packed appointment books and a huge number of new partners getting firsthand information from the Astaro staff during the event underline the success of this year’s participation. New products like Next Generation Firewall, Astaro Endpoint Security, and Astaro Log Management will be shown at it-sa until October 13th. More information can be found at www.it-sa.de.

Please klick the image below to open the slight show.

Right in the middle of it are the overarching booths from Astaro and Sophos with individual presentation and meeting areas which are only a stone’s throw apart and thus provide an excellent communication transfer. The security specialists offer an exclusive glimpse into the new products and extensions for existing lines such as Next Generation Firewall, Astaro Endpoint Security or Astaro Log Management. A huge number of new customers and partners already enjoyed the professional competence of the team on site and there is no end in sight as far as the stream of visitors goes. So if you happen to be in Dubai during the next day don’t miss this event until October 13th!

Klick the image below to open the slight show.

We still plan to release a feature which allows you to re-inject a past Web Security log for report regeneration in a future 8.20x Up2Date. More information will be communicated on this as it is known. Note that when you are updating from 8.103, you can push the "Update to latest version" button, which will apply Up2Dates 8.200, 8.201, and 8.202 in order, and then reboot only one time.

Astaro 8.202 Download Information:
Remarks:

• System will be rebooted
• Configuration will be upgraded
• Connected Wifi APs will perform firmware upgrade
• If you are affected by issue 18872, power-cycle your Wireless AP's so they reconnect

News:

• Greatly Improved Web Filter performance
• Removed DigiNotar HTTPS Verification CA

Fixes:

• [16215] ctype: application/flash-video not contained per default in cc>http>noscancontent
• [18567] "MIME blocking inspects HTTP body" is broken
• [18604] Web Application Firewall mixes backend websites
• [18653 If the HTTPs-Proxy is enabled, login to some websites may result in "Internal server error"
• [18684] Exception for extensions will not be logged. There will be always a empty string in the log: exceptions=""
• [18695] Policy routing in combination with Application Control may cause problems
• [18769] If virus scanning of a website failed, no error message is shown in the browser
• [18771] Passwords with special characters (@, =) cause authentication to fail when using 'Transparent w/ Auth' mode
• [18802] Executive reports will not be generated in some installations
• [18825] HTTP Proxy doesn't reauthenticate AD SSO client after auth exception matched
• [18872] WiFi: astaro wireless daemon client sends incomplete client list to ASG, entering "inactive" state
• [18880] Edir SSO authentication still times out in http proxy after 8.201
• [18927] Wifi: Access Point with a MAC address ending in :f8 cannot connect to the ASG
• [18929] Transparent Proxy with Auth not working properly
• [18936] HTTP Proxy: SSL tunnel handler doesn't close client connection in all cases
• [18974] Up/down script running on 100%
• [17693] AntiVirus scan fails with cssd response: 500 Internal Server Error
• [18607] No Wireless-Communication between AP30 and Clients when using "AVM Fritz USB WLAN-Stick N" 

Download Links:
Below is the link for a manual download of the Up2Date package from 8.201 to 8.202.
Corresponding 8.202 ISO images and Virtual Machines will be released ASAP and this post will be updated at that time.

ASG 8.202 Up2Date Package
Link: ftp.astaro.de/ASG/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.202.tgz.gpg
Size: ~101MB
Md5Sum: a43263326af6bd9b977a9a3f1a6affa3

Up2Date Installation:
Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an already-downloaded Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

	Astaro Security Gateway Up2Date FTP Mirrors:

 Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.202] WAN Balancing Rules").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Angelo Comazzetto
ASG Product Manager

This edition of our tips series (for the EMEA and APAC regions) will help you master the intricacies of the Astaro Security Gateway.

Why is the Internet connection so slow?

• Learn how to find the root of the problem
• Find out how you can optimise your configuration

This online session will provide you with detailed technical information and practical tips and tricks that are not in available in your handbook! Our webinars use few PowerPoint slides, and focus on live system demonstrations.

Register today and comfortably take part from your workplace. And don’t forget, our live sessions enable you to ask our experts your individual questions at the end of the presentation.

Date: Tuesday, 20.12.2011 | 10:00am CET
Length: 60 Minutes
Hosts: Lutz Linzenmeier (Astaro Head of Pre-Sales EMEA) & Sebastian Fiene (Astaro Marketing Manager)
Target Groups: End users, partners, distributors and anyone interested in Astaro products.

We look forward to seeing you at the webinar! Please note: If you are not able to participate in the live session, registration ensures that the recorded file is sent to your inbox upon availability.

Sign up here >

Astaro has always been concerned with educating the public on the importance of cyber security and how people can secure their homes and business networks. This is why we offer our Astaro Security Gateway to home users for free and created an informative Facebook Fan Page. It is also the driving force behind this blog. So, it only made sense for us to participate in Cyber Security Awareness Month.

Our efforts include the creation of www.astaro.com/ncsam-2011 where we will post tips for parents, teachers, students and businesses on staying safe online as well as information about a video submission contest for students. Through this contest, students can submit a one- to two-minute video answering the questions “Why is cyber security awareness important?” and “What are you doing to stay safe online?” using this online portal. During the month of October, visitors to our site can vote on the best videos in each age group. At the end of the month Astaro will select one winner from each age group and four lucky winners will receive a brand new laptop!

Please join us in promoting cyber security awareness by forwarding the link to the micro-site and participating in the video contest. With a little education we can make the Internet a safer place. Please note that the competition is open to residents of the United States and Canada only.

Enter here >

E-mail systems are not designed to manage huge volumes of data, and yet they are forced to do so by an ever growing e-mail flood. In real terms, this leads to mail server capacity problems. As a result, servers may become slow and unstable and ordinary maintenance routines can take a disproportionate amount of time – or users are forced to limit their e-mail volume and thus store their e-mails in PST-files.

The fact of having e-mails stored at dispersed locations directly leads to the next challenge: to quickly retrieve specific e-mails when needed. Furthermore, archiving business correspondence is a legal requirement and more often than not, includes the need to archive e-mails.

All these troubles are surely worth to have a closer look at archiving e-mails. We'll do so in five consecutive blog articles and start with the three most important reasons to opt for an e-mail archive. With an effective archiving solution in place, administrators and end users benefit from various advantages such as increased productivity and will not need to worry about mail server scalability or mailbox limitations.

Legal Compliance – a proactive approach is best
Legislature dictates precisely what e-mail content must be archived and for how long. There are no exceptions or excuses to these laws, and non-compliance may lead to severe penalties. On the other hand, there are rules in place which define the content that must not be archived.
An e-mail archiving solution helps you to adhere to legal compliance requirements and even provides additional benefits regarding productivity.

Mail Server Offloading – relief for administrators
E-mail servers need to manage growing data traffic. As a result, these systems often become unstable and slow if not maintained accordingly. These efforts for maintenance, hardware and upgrades incur additional costs. Likewise, backups and restoration are then disproportionately complex and lengthy. The cost of storing mail data in e-mail systems is relatively high.
Modern archiving solutions address these issues by reducing the data volume on e-mail servers to the data from the last few weeks - instead of years.

The Infinite Mailbox – productivity gained easily
A great deal of business relevant information is very often only available via e-mail. As a matter of fact, reliable retrieval of old e-mails is essential. However, mailbox limitations force users to delete e-mails or to locally save complex archives - which makes their recovery more difficult. It also increases the risk of losing important e-mails as local archives might not be included in regular backups.
With structured and quick search functions, archiving solutions offer significant facilitation for the user. Users get access to the archive and process archived e-mails exactly like “normal” ones in their inbox.

After having considered the reasons for mail archiving, the next logical step is to take a look at the different deployment scenarios.
Stay tuned for part II of our new blog series on mail archiving!

If you like to receive more information on mail archiving in the meantime – why not register for our e-mail series?
 

You can view the initial 8.200 announcement here, while the 8.2 release notes are located here.

We still plan to release a feature which allows you to re-inject a past Web Security log for report regeneration in a future 8.20x Up2Dates. More information will be communicated on this as it is known. Note that when you are updating from 8.103, you can push the "Update to latest version" which will apply both 8.200 and 8.201 in order, and then reboot only once.

Astaro 8.201 Download Information:
Remarks:

•  System will be rebooted
•  Configuration will be upgraded
•  Connected Wifi APs will perform firmware upgrade
•  DHCP lease files will be deleted
•  DHCP clients will reappear in list on their next lease refresh

News:

• Fixed: Various problems with SSL VPN
• Fixed: Issue with PDF Executive Report
• Fixed: Application Control Reporting
• Added: Support for ACC Version 3 Backup Rollout feature

Fixes:

• [17693] AntiVirus scan fails with cssd response: 500 Internal Server Error
• [18607] No Wireless-Communication between AP30 and Clients using "AVM Fritz USB WLAN-Stick N" 

Download Links:
Below is the link for a manual download of the Up2Date package from 8.200 to 8.201. Corresponding 8.201 ISO images will be released next week and this post will be updated at that time.
Link: ftp.astaro.de/ASG/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.201.tgz.gpg
Size: ~27MB
Md5: 022d0480940f796d28532d00c3cae1c4

Up2Date Installation:
Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an already-downloaded Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

	Astaro Security Gateway Up2Date FTP Mirrors:

 Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.201] Application Control Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Angelo Comazzetto
ASG Product Manager

At Astaro, we are always working towards further expanding our online presence. After the recent successful launch of the Chinese site (www.astaro.com/zh-cn), we have since been diligently working on two more languages which will help us in local markets.

You can view the new sites here:

• Spanish - www.astaro.com/es-es
• Portuguese - www.astaro.com/pt-br

Furthermore, the new Portuguese datasheets can be found here: www.astaro.com/pt-br/recursos/folhas-de-dados. The Spanish versions will be available shortly.

Our selected group proved to be thoroughly motivated and energetic as it was all in good spirits and supported the Hänsel + Gretel Foundation (http://www.haensel-gretel.de). This organization works to raise money in their quest to protect children against abuse.

Themed “goals for children”, the BWG Systemhausgruppe and the SSV Ettlingen organized the event for the third time running. A big thank you to the Astaro team, represented by the departments R&D, IT, Support, Presales, Sales, Finance and even senior management and congratulations on finishing in 10th place (out of 11 teams).

Despite the game results, we felt like winners anyway in the end as we were able to help raise 5,000€ through participation fees and private donators.

This annual list recognizes female executives for their accomplishments over the past year, based on their achievements as executives and the amount of influence they wield over the technology channel. This year’s Women of the Channel were chosen by the editors of CRN Magazine from a field of vendor channel organizations, distributors and solution providers.

Last year Regina took over Astaro’s renewal business in the United States, building a renewal program that also included a customer satisfaction component. Her efforts have not only improved relationships with partners and customers, she has improved Astaro’s renewal rate to be well above 90%.

“We are very proud of Regina here at Astaro. Since joining Astaro over six years ago, Regina has quickly moved up the ranks in large part due to her ability to develop relationships with partners that are mutually beneficial” said Bob Darabant, Vice President of Americas, Astaro. “Astaro has always respected Regina and her talents as well as her leadership skills. However, this recognition demonstrates to the world what we’ve known all along.”

Read the full press release here >

"The Vendor Accreditation Program is important to MSPs, since companies that receive accreditation have demonstrated their ongoing commitment to the channel,” said Charles Weaver, president of the MSPAlliance. "We are very proud to have Astaro as a part of this prestigious body of vendors.”

Read the full press release here >

There is also an Interactive Web Reporting Engine that lets you craft and mold reports; you can navigate through data until you have the answer you need, no more tirelessly looking through pre-arranged reports hoping you stumble across the right one! 3G/UMTS USB support, Search Engine "Safe Search" enforcement, weights for Internet Connection balancing, and a User agent for user-based security configuration have all been introduced as well, to name just a few. WebAdmin sees usability improvements, and there is a technical preview of our upcoming Log Management product. Taking advantage of new technology and methods, we have vastly improved throughput performance of ASG, increasing it by up to four times in some areas, with a focus on Intrusion Protection and Firewall throughput. Read on for more...

For over 8 months our ASG Public Beta program has seen hundreds of particpants making over 5000 posts while you helped us shape and build this version to solve the problems you face in the real-world. Dozens of new features and functions have been added or improved upon, and our open approach to feedback and improvement suggestions via our Feature Portal has evolved Astaro Security Gateway further than ever; it truly is a product of YOUR environment.

A summary of some new features and functionality follows below, along with download information. For more details about Astaro Security Gateway 8.2 you can view the full release notes here. We hope you enjoy this release as much as we enjoyed making it for you.

 ASG 8.200 Feature Summary:

Application Control

ASG provides Application Control and Network Visibilty.  Application Control uses hundreds of precise patterns to identify which applications are being used on the network, regardless of the port or protocol they use to communicate. Network Visibility gives you a real-time display of exactly how your Internet connection is being used, and lets you create configuration directly from the display. We are pleased to included Application Control as part of our Web Security and Full Guard subscriptions. Read more >

Interactive Web Reporting

The Web Reporting Engine has been entirely re-designed from the ground-up to give a new, optimized experience which is tailored for how you expect to see data while delivering the information you are looking for easily. Click, build, save, and subscribe users and groups to automated report delivery in moments. You can even see exactly what your users are searching for with Google, Yahoo, and Bing. A staggering array of features awaits you. Read more >

*Note* - Installing ASG 8.200 will clear existing Web Security Reports! This is necessary as the database systems are vastly different. Soon, we will offer the ability to “re-inject” a past Web Security log file from 8.103 into the system so that you can control when this system-intensive task will occur.  (Log files are completely untouched and remain intact on the system as configured)
If you rely on existing Web Security reports, do NOT install ASG 8.200 until the re-inject feature has been released in a future Up2Date.

3G/UMTS USB Modem Support

ASG supports the use of 3G/UMTS USB modems (sticks). This feature allows for these cellular USB-connected devices to be used as an Internet interface. The support of these devices lets you add redundancy or connectivity at temporary sites, remote locations, or areas without a good selection of affordable Internet connections. Further, you can add 3G/UMTS connections to the ASG’s WAN (Internet) link balancing pool.

Astaro Authentication Agent

Provide per-user configuration using the new Astaro Authentication Agent (AAA). Users can now authenticate using this lightweight program that is used for identification to control access or assign permissions such as Web Security profiles, while gaining more detailed reporting for environments without dedicated authentication servers

Web Filtering Safe Search Enforcement

The Web Security system of ASG can now enforce the enabling of “Safe Searching” for the user at the three major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing).
This feature will automatically enable the “safe search” features of these engines, which will filter their search queries and results no matter what the user sets for preferences in their browsers

More features:

Web Application Security: Form Hardening - Enforce the answers which can be given to forms you offer on your servers. Read more >
Web Application Security: Reputation Filter - Disallow visitors from anonymous or known malicious sources.
Weighted Load Balancing for WAN Uplink and Server Load Balancing - Specifiy how heavily each of your Internet connections should be used.
Improved IP Address-to-User Mappings - Resolution system displays Authenticated Name, Definition Name, and other factors before displaying IP addresses in reports.
Backup File Information Stripping  - Reuse backups in other installations easily.
Group-in-Group support - Reduce the amount of individual rules you need to make by grouping existing object groups together.
L2TP VPN for Android Devices - Connect securely with an IPSec-Based VPN for your Android mobile.
"No NAT" NAT rules (NAT exceptions) - Remove/Exempt traffic from NAT  
Virtualization - Increased performance of Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, and KVM
Astaro Wireless Security Improvements - Wireless Access Points can update without rebooting, and accept configuration changes without dropping connections.
WebAdmin Dashboard Timeout Option - Choose if the ASG dashboard honors your timeout settings or not.
Dashboard License Expiration Colors - A visual aid about your subscription statuses for the ASG Dashboard
Demo Data  Injection - Command line option to saturate an ASG with usage and reports, great for demonstrating to customer sites or events.

Other new things:

-SNMP Version 3 support
-Improved Web Filter Deployment Mode Selection   
-Interface Virtual MAC Address (Spoofing)   
-Web Application Security: Drop Invalid Cookies   
-Web Application Security: Rule Skipping   
-Web Application Security: SAN Certificate Support   
-Editing User-Defined Mail White/Blacklists in WebAdmin   
-Support for Hurricane Electric IPv6 Tunnel Broker   
 -Backend Firewall Rule Enhancements (IPSets)  
-Web Filter Multi-CPU Scaling   
-Greatly Improved Network Performance (Soft-IRQ Balancing) 
-WebAdmin Physical Console Direction Message   
-Color Blindness Support for ASG Red/Green Buttons   
-WebAdmin “Terms of Use”
 

 Astaro 8.200 Download Information:

Remarks:
-System will be rebooted
-Configuration will be upgraded
-Existing Web Security log files are retained
-Web Reporting Data will be reset
-Web Reporting Data can be recreated from log files in an upcoming Up2Date
-Connected REDs will perform firmware upgrade
-Connected Wifi APs will perform firmware upgrade

News:
  •Next Generation Firewall: Network Visibility and Application Control
       •Application Control supersedes IM/P2P
  •New Web Security reporting:
       •Improved UI
       •Custom reports per mail
       •Departmental reports
       •Search engine usage reporting
  •Client-based user authentication for Windows
  •ASG integration for hosted Log Management service (Beta)
  •New Wifi firmware:
       •Rebootless reconfiguration (for majority of cases)
       •AP grouping
       •Dynamic VLAN tagging (with RADIUS)
  •WebApplication Security:
       •Form Hardening
       •Reputation-based client blocking
       •Sitemap-XML import
       •Invalid cookies now dropped instead of rejected
  •HTTP/S Proxy: SafeSearch enforcement
  •IPv6:
       •IPv6 support for SMTP proxy
       •IPv6 support for HTTP proxy in "full transparent" mode
       •ICMPv6 service definitions
  •Configuration:
      •Group-in-Group support for network and service definitions
      •Support for "Stripped Backups" (usable as templates)
  •UMTS modem support
  •KVM VirtIO support
  •Hyper-V support
  •Network performance improvements:
      •Packet filter ruleset optimization (IPset)
      •New IRQ balancer
      •IPS optimization
  •SNMP v3 support
  •Weighted server load balancing
  •Weighted uplink balancing
  •NAT exceptions
  •Display "Terms of Use" for WebAdmin

Fixes:
  [11998] - Default src addr parameter not working for S2S IPv6 routes
  [12839] - Site-to-Site connection will not be established with SHA2 as ipsec authentication algorithm
  [14782] - UTF-8 characters in realname of imported keys are not displayed correctly
  [14820] - Virus uploads don't get blocked if XSS or SQL Injection filter (mod_security) is enabled
  [15972] - Exceptions do not work for Cross Site Scripting, SQL-Injection or Cookie Signing
  [16153] - Radius secret containing backtick character (`) doesn't work
  [16206] - [AUA] AD groups containing utf8 characters are not returned when using test authentication
  [16431] - PGP Inline encrypted Emails arrive with emtpy body at the mail-client
  [16593] - Scheduled up2dates don't run when atd is dead. Selfmon check needed.
  [16853] - Radius secret containing backtick character (`) doesn't work
  [16880] - WAF logfile does not show block reason for "XSS Filter" or "SQL Injection Filter"
  [17362] - After successful Smime-decryption, the emails are sent out encrypted when signature verification fails
  [17498] - Need an option to clear, set, or copy the DF bit flag for traffic related to the IPSEC tunnel
  [17907] - User prefetch fails if the mail and proxyAddresses is case-sensitive

Download Links:
Below is the link for the Up2Date package from 8.103 to 8.200. (ISO images for all installations will be available for the GA Up2Date Push)
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/ASG/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.200.tgz.gpg
Size: ~189MB
MD5: 3954085f9e6b2e290233ff7716c83bac

Up2Date Installation:
Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an already-downloaded Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

	Astaro Security Gateway Up2Date FTP Mirrors:

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.200] Application Control Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Angelo Comazzetto
ASG Product Manager

On July 14, 2011, the Karlsruher Sicherheitsinitiative "KA-IT-Si" celebrated its 10th anniversary at the "3. Day of IT Security", a joint event of the Karlsruher Sicherheitsinitiative KA-IT-Si, IHK Karlsruhe and the CyberForum e.V. On this occasion, Mr. Michael Hange, president of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), gave the keynote on IT security in Germany and the role of the BSI. Subsequent to his keynote speech, he presented Astaro's recent Common Criteria EAL4+ certificate to Markus Hennig, CTO of Astaro.

The certificate with the identification number BSI-DSZ-CC-0696-2011 applies to the product Astaro Security Gateway V8 Packet Filter Version 1.000 / secunet wall 2 packet filter version 1.000, which has been developed by Astaro and secunet in a technological partnership.

The Astaro Security Gateway V8 Packet Filter / secunet wall 2 packet filter is the firewall component of the UTM security solutions Astaro Security Gateway V8 and secunet wall 2. The certification is based on the Common Criteria version 3.1 for the security level EAL4+ and was accompanied by the accredited testing laboratory SRC Security Research & Consulting GmbH situated in Bonn.

The highest internationally, mutually recognized certification level EAL4 + requires in addition to an inspection of the development environment by the BSI also close scrutiny of the complete source code by independent experts. The IT Security Certificate therefore warrants to customers that security requirements created by Astaro are properly implemented and that the processes used in this case meet recognized standards.

With the certification of the product Astaro Security Gateway V8 Packet Filter it is world’s first complete IPv6 packet filtering functionality of a UTM security solution that has been officially accredited and approved. The certified packet filter was delivered for the first time with Astaro Security Gateway Version 8.103 and secunet wall 2 version 8.103, respectively.

Employees and partners on-site install children's villages in which the girls and boys live like in an extended family. They care for the integral development of the children in their homes, schools, training centers, medical and agricultural institutions as well as other programs. At present, about 3,500 children live in 9 orphanages in Mexico, Honduras, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Peru and Bolivia. In addition, the fund supports the poorest children in the slums of its neighborhood. Annually, about 40,000 needy children are given the chance of a better future.

All those involved in the project fight daily to cater for the needs of so many children, which is a difficult and strenuous task. Thus, the organization constantly looks for donations via their website (www.mygoodshop.org) and we are impressed that 100% of all donations reach their objective! We at Astaro are touched not only by the plight of these underprivileged children, but also by those who work with the project to make a difference. We have contributed to the organization by supplying a free Full Guard bundle to protect them against all Internet-based threats.

We wish "Our Little Brothers and Sisters" not only a secure and protected year, but also a lot of fun!

Details
Remarks:
   * Your system will be rebooted
   * Configuration will not be upgraded
   * AP10 and AP30 units will upgrade their firmware after Up2Date has fully installed. Avoid power cycling your AP device

News:
   Improved HTTP Proxy, especially with remote authentication
   Improved Wireless firmware
   Improved RED service

Fixes:
   [1468]: Scheduled Up2Dates do not work correctly
   [15225]: Availability groups deployed via ACC are unresolved
   [15337]: WiFi: Possible connectivity problems with 40Mhz channels
   [17198]: Upgrade to V8 not possible in some rare cases

Download Information
   Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.com/pub/ASG/v7/up2date/u2d-sys-7.511.tgz.gpg
   Size: ~155 MB
   Md5: e764f7ce6f97d07d6f3db6a8c374717d

Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to manually apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro ASG Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.103] Using Astaro RED with Split-tunneling").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There are also demo servers for public use anytime at http://demo.astaro.com

Enjoy,

Angelo Comazzetto

Organizations today face new challenges in protecting users and IT infrastructure from complex and targeted security threats; especially those that gain entry from across the Web or through new applications. As workforces become distributed across multiple offices, including the home, even basic security controls have become hard to update and enforce. Through this acquisition, Sophos will address the need for security solutions that provide threat and policy protection no matter where the user or company data resides.

“Never before has the security and IT environment been so challenging to secure for our customers,” said Steve Munford, Chief Executive Officer, Sophos. “Together Sophos and Astaro have the ingredients to uniquely solve today and tomorrow’s increasingly complex security challenges while allowing IT to enable users to work more flexibly and embrace new devices and applications.”

The acquisition, which was announced on May 6, 2011, will deliver an industry-first combination of endpoint protection with UTM. Once integration is complete, the Sophos portfolio of security products will:

• Combine Astaro’s network security with Sophos’ threat expertise. The initial integration with the Astaro Security Gateway and Sophos Anti-Virus will bring real-time protection against malware using Sophos Live Protection infrastructure, a comprehensive architecture for real-time updates to users in offices anywhere around the globe, and Sophos Web protection, real-time blocking of malicious websites via SophosLabs extensive Web reputation systems; which classify over 50,000 infected Web pages every day.
• Longer term, the integration will allow central management of anti-malware, Web and data control policies across endpoint, mobile and network enforcement points – including consumer-owned mobile devices and branch, home or remote offices. This will offer IT better visibility and control, whether the enforcement points are enterprise, consumer owned or located at a central, branch or home or remote office.
• Upon completing Astaro partner certification, Sophos partners will have access to the full network security portfolio including unique capabilities for protecting branch offices, log management and a leading network security gateway available in any delivery model. Likewise, Astaro partners will have the opportunity to become Sophos partners and deliver a complete set of endpoint, mobile and gateway solutions to their customers.

“Both companies are pragmatic and appreciate the need to be simple and secure for target buyers,” wrote The 451 Group in a May 6th 2011 Deal Analysis¹ , regarding the acquisition. “The disruptions in this market require bold moves. Sophos has made one.”

“We founded Astaro with the mission of bringing network security products to organizations of all sizes and accomplished this goal by creating easy-to-use, Unified Threat Management solutions that addressed several facets of network security. However, as the threat landscape continued to evolve it became clear that gateway security alone would no longer be sufficient to effectively secure a network,” said Jan Hichert, Astaro co-founder and CEO, and now Sophos’ Senior Vice President and General Manager, Network Security.

About Sophos
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards. Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK.

About Astaro
Astaro offers the most complete and easy to use network security appliances available. Astaro’s award-winning products provide the latest protection with the best total cost of ownership. Software, hardware and virtual appliance offerings provide users the flexibility to meet a wide variety of deployment scenarios. Distributed by a growing worldwide network of more than 2,500 resellers, more than 56,000 Astaro installations protect business, school and government networks against IT security threats. Astaro, headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany, offers free downloads of its products at www.astaro.com.

¹ “Sophos moves beyond the endpoint in acquiring Astaro” published May 6, 2011.

Held for the first time as a whole day event, high-profile speakers from the Astaro Management and Product Management teams gave a detailed insight into our strategy, roadmap and the status of new and upcoming product innovations.

We would like to thank everyone who shared their valuable time with us and came to one of the locations. We were especially happy to hear constructive feedback about our products. In many discussions, we received important suggestions and learned that our partners understand and approve of our motives for the Sophos acquisition.

It is important to us to continue to uphold our successful relationship with our resellers and customers whilst strengthening it in the future!

We are already looking forward to seeing you at our next roadshow tour.

Some impressions of our Astaro Partner Roadshow 2011:

The Internet connects about two billion people today. If it continued to only connect people, four billion IPv4 addresses would probably suffice for quite a while. But in recent years, the Internet has become so much more - now supporting new technology such as smartphones, iPods and TVs connected directly to the Internet. All equipped with their own IP addresses.

IDC believes that the digital universe as we know it today will increase by a factor of 44 until the year 2020. This is why an alternative standard to the common IPv4 had to be found. Astaro is confident that IPv6 will soon become the Internet standard of the future and joined the International IPv6 Day in order to test how far we are away from completely switching over to IPv6.

Markus Hennig, Astaro Chief Technology Officer:
"The experiment has shown whether routers, computers and specific Web browsers can deal with IPv6. Thus, we changed our website to the new Internet standard. In parallel, we wanted and still want to offer our customers the opportunity to test IPv6. As we did not encounter any problems we are still running on the IPv6 standard.”

For all those who still want to test their IPv6 readiness:
Here is a short guide on how to enable IPv6 on your Astaro Security Gateway.

Step 1: Get a IPv6 tunnel broker
Your ISP will not support the native IPv6 standard, so you will probably need to first get an IPv6 tunnel broker. For Internet access with dynamic IP addresses, we recommend the tunnel brokers from freenet6 or SixXS because they do not change the assigned IPv6 subnet. For Internet access via fixed IP addresses, you can also opt for the 6to4 as a tunnel broker as it can be activated with a single click and without prior registration.

Step 2: Create a Freenet6 account
Create a Gogo6 Account first: http://gogonet.gogo6.com/main/authorization/signUp
Then you can register for a freenet6 Account for the IPv6 Tunnel Broker Service: http://gogonet.gogo6.com/page/freenet6-account

Step 3: Adjust your ASG settings
Go to the column “Interfaces & Routing” on your ASG and click on "Enable IPv6”. Now choose “user” for the field “authentication” of your tunnel broker mask and select “Freenet6” in the field “broker”. Enter your tunnel ID and password as username and click “apply”.

On the tab "Global", you can now see your current status and your IPv6 subnet. You now have full IPv6 connectivity! Web Security users with a current HTTP proxy can now connect to IPv6 addresses such as http://www.test-ipv6.com, although they only have IPv4.

Step 4: Client configuration
To roll out IPv6 to your clients, you must configure IPv6 on your internal network. For your first IPv6 supporting internal interface you can choose, for example, the first IP from the first available subnet (eg 2001:0 db8: 85a3: eb00:: 1 / 64).

Clients can be either configured via pre-installed Advertisments or via DHCPv6. For best compatibility please go in the column "Prefix Advertisments" on "IPv6" and activate the pre-installed Advertisments on your internal network interface.

Most of your existing packet filter rules are probably already IPv6-compatible. Depending on your configuration, you may still need an additional rule that allows IPv6 traffic between your internal network and the Internet, such as web traffic.

Step 5: The test
ipconfig in the Windows command line shows if the Advertizing works and which IP address was assigned to you.
In order to finally test IPv6, start your browser and go to http://www.test-ipv6.com.

For the past ten years Astaro has grown and developed to become one of the leading network security companies in the market. This growth is in part due to our strong product line and singular focus to provide easy-to-use security solutions, but it is also due to our involvement in the security community.

For the past several years, Jack Daniel has pushed Astaro to be more involved in the security community first as a Support Engineer and then as our Community Development manager.

Jack initiated our involvement with organizations such as NAISIG and the Security BSides un-conferences. He helped drive our social media initiatives on Twitter and was a frequent visitor and contributor to our Up2Date blog and Astaro Security Perspectives blog.

When Jack informed us that he would be leaving Astaro, it was clear this decision came after much thought and contemplation. The position that awaits him at Tenable Network Security will offer new opportunities and challenges and we respect his decision. We are disappointed to see Jack leave, but we are excited for the opportunity that awaits him in his new role and understand that sometimes great people are hard to keep – no matter how hard you try. It is no surprise that another company recognized Jack’s abilities.

Astaro will continue to participate in the Security BSides conferences as well as the other programs Jack worked on. We are still committed to the security community and look forward to interacting with Jack during these events. His direct contributions to Astaro will be missed, but as long as he is involved in the security field we all benefit from will knowledge and perspectives.

Goodbye, Jack, and good luck.

While increasing the number of doctors in rural regions is the ideal solution, there are alternatives to solving this pressing issue. One such solution is implementing Telemedicine or telehealth facilities. A recent study from UMass Memorial finds that telemedicine can help improve ICU patient care.

Given the need for rural doctors and the potential for improved patient care telemedicine presents we would think more and more hospitals would jump at the chance to implement telemedicine policies and procedures. However, like any new idea there are barriers to this possibility. According to Dr. Jeremy Kahn who was quoted in a recent blog post by Boston.com’s Liz Kowalczyk, “while telemedicine programs have exploded in the past decade, studies of the benefits, especially in ICUs, have produced disappointing results. Policy-makers have questioned whether this expensive technology is useful at all, if it just drives up health care costs without showing a payoff of improving care.”

As with all industries medical organizations face challenges when choosing and deploying the technology that is ever more relied upon to diagnose and care for patients. These new solutions come with the burden of new training, integration hurdles, and of course have a price tag that organizations are increasingly concerned about in these trying financial times

The key here seems to be “expensive technology”. If we can lower the costs of the technology needed to connect healthcare facilities, secure patient data and monitor patients’ statuses remotely then telemedicine becomes more of a reality than wishful thinking. Unfortunately the technology necessary to create secure connections can be costly, especially when it comes to managing the technology. What good is a remote monitoring tool if it needs a full time IT administrator to make sure it stays connected?

The technology industry needs to partner with the healthcare industry to find realistic ways of connecting remote/rural healthcare facilities to doctors in more populated areas. This way we can ensure all patients are getting the best care possible. It may not be as ideal as recruiting doctors to practice in these rural areas, but it is the next best thing.

While Telemedicine programs are unique to the medical field, the criticisms and concerns are all too common when it comes to technology, and the challenges faced by administrators and IT staff can be found in most businesses today. How do we provide secure business critical services while being cost conscious.

One solution may be to use a configuration-less device such as Astaro’s RED which offers simple ‘plug n play’ connectivity which can allow remote medical professionals the ability to help care for patients while not being physically onsite. These solutions make it possible to set up a remote healthcare facility and monitor patients from afar. Solutions like Astaro RED, along with the proliferation of broadband and electronic medical records may make telehealth a reality.

This event is not only unique in its length, but also with its goal carrying the motto: "Aiming to add life to the days that remain, when no more days can be added to life". Throughout its 17 year history, over 29,000,000 EUR has been raised.

This year, Astaro proudly supported this event with our Astaro Security Gateway and Wireless Security solutions. The good people at Contec, our Dutch Distributor, made it possible and ensured that all VIPs and the on-location media had secure access to the WiFi network.

View our slideshow from the event below.

Details
Remarks:
   * Your system will be rebooted
   * Configuration will not be upgraded

News:
   Contains ASGPF (Firewall) certified according to CC EAL4+
   Fix various issues in HTTP/S Proxy

Fixes:
   [16255] Exception for Certificate Trust Check does not work in transparent mode
   [16438] Self signed certificate in chain (and an exception for all requests going to this category) will not work for some banking sites

Download Information
   Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/Astaro_Security_Gateway/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.103.tgz.gpg
   Size: ~84.5MB
   Md5: c65ab286d656b8f84e7c6ee3e3f5054

The ASG V8.000 release notes can be found here, 8.100+ release notes (here) are located on the Astaro Support KB.
Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro Security Gateway Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.103] Using Astaro RED with Split-tunneling").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There are also demo servers for public use anytime at http://demo.astaro.com

Enjoy,

Angelo Comazzetto
ASG Product Manager

Around 300 spectators watched and listened to the running commentary by the two moderators, Markus Hennig from Astaro and Kester Habermann from LinuxTag. This year, the jury already revealed the systems in advance of the contest which allowed the teams to prepare “battle plans” in advance of the competition. All teams were paired up and competed against each other through three phases and worked to infiltrate the system while repairing security holes set up by the opposing team. The winning team was then decided by the total amount of points accumulated overall.

The contest conditions for the participants were challenging as they had to demonstrate their skill and concentrate under time pressure and the watchful eyes of the audience. This required a great deal of ingenuity and creativity and the teams did not fail. They impressed the audience with numerous spectacular hacks. "I thought that I was well versed with Linux systems, but these teams taught me better. Congratulations!" praised an interested spectator.

Astaro supports the Hacking Contest as every hacker has the potential to become a solid computer scientist who can overcome the obstacles and weaknesses of any system without any problems – which is an asset for every company and IT infrastructure.

We are happy to announce and congratulate this year’s winners:

In the first row - first place with 61 Points: Team Legofan
Members: Jakob Lell, Christopher Nguyen, Andrew Karpow

In the second row - second place with 32 points: Team POVaddict
Members: Christian Perle, Michael Karcher

In the third row - third place with 26.5 points: Das Green Team
Members: Bernhard M. Wiedemann, Rainer ten Haaf, Mathias Jeschke
 

The Hacking Contest in pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/linuxtag/sets/72157626591974079/with/5718422603/
 

Properly deployed for appropriate purposes, cloud computing can be fantastic. I have moved most of my lab systems to a cloud environment and it has provided a huge improvement in my ability to test systems and deliver demonstrations. Astaro uses cloud systems to deliver content and services for partners and customers more effectively that we could with internal resources. But, cloud computing is not for everyone, or for everything. You just need to research, plan, and migrate wisely.

There are a handful of very good cloud computing security documents out there, here are ones I recommend (some are pretty big PDFs):

Start with the NIST definitions doc, it is only seven pages, and only the last two have the actual definition. It is not “security specific”, but is sets a common terminology for the rest. Download it here (PDF).

My new favorite cloud security reference is from the Australian Defence Signals Directorate; their Cloud Computing Security Considerations is great resource and a great conversation starter for those considering a move to cloud computing. (It is 19 pages and an easy read, too). If you read only one, read this. And share it. Download it here (PDF).

For more meaty discussions of cloud security, it is hard to beat the documents recommended for those preparing to take the Cloud Security Alliance (https://cloudsecurityalliance.org) CCSK (Certificate of Cloud Computing Knowledge https://ccsk.cloudsecurityalliance.org) exam:

CSA’s own “Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing V2.1” (download the PDF here) is not a light read, and is enterprise focused, but has a lot of good information. The other study document is the ENISA “Cloud Computing Risk Assessment”. It is also not a quick read, but has more small- to mid-sized business focus (reflecting its European origin).

Speaking of CCSK, it is an interesting certification. I’ve recently passed the exam, and heartily recommend the study material- but the certification is probably of limited value to most people until “cloud” is better understood. As you would expect, CSA has an enormous amount of information on their site, covering a myriad of cloud concepts.

A couple more references for those of you who want a broader understanding:

NIST also has a “Cloud Computing Reference Architecture” (download the PDF here) which needs some help in the area of readability, but is a good resource, especially for the discussion of cloud computing roles.

OpenCrowd’s Cloud Taxonomy (http://cloudtaxonomy.opencrowd.com) is useful for help in categorizing cloud products and services and for understanding the categories.

This is by no means a complete, or even exhaustive list; but it is a good set of resources which should be helpful to those considering a move to cloud computing (or to those already in the clouds, but afraid of heights).

Businesses today face unprecedented challenges in protecting users and IT infrastructure from escalating complex security threats, especially those brought on by more mobile, roaming users, new application protocols, and distributed networks. There is a widening security gap for companies given the new rules by which users, businesses and IT operate and this acquisition answers unmet customer needs for better security coordination and effectiveness between users, applications and IT infrastructure.

“The combination of Astaro’s comprehensive portfolio of network security solutions alongside our endpoint, mobile, and email and web threat and data protection capabilities will enable us to continue to deliver on our vision of providing complete security without complexity wherever the user and company data resides,” stated Steve Munford, Chief Executive Officer, Sophos.

The market for multi-function security appliances has continued to grow because organizations of all sizes want better protection against security threats and need to support their users and distributed workplaces in a comprehensive, easy to use, efficient way. According to IDC, the market for unified threat management was approximately $2 billion worldwide in 2010, with a CAGR of 13% 2010-2014 .

Astaro, with $56 million in billings and 30% year over year growth in 2010, is the fourth largest dedicated unified threat management (UTM) provider, leads the market and has sustained fast growth due to its strong track record of innovation and robust portfolio of feature rich network security solutions. With over 56,000 installations in over 60 countries, Astaro protects business and government networks across the globe against IT security threats. The company currently has more than 220 employees in nine countries spanning three continents, including a significant presence in the EMEA region.

“Demand for network security solutions with more comprehensive and high-quality protection is accelerating fast, and yet companies are struggling with the complexity of multiple security solutions to serve these needs,” stated Jan Hichert, Chief Executive Officer, Astaro. “We are excited to join forces with Sophos, as we share a common mission and passion for providing the most comprehensive security solutions that are also easy to use. Together, we will deliver to customers the ability to apply consistent security and web and application controls regardless of where the user is or where the network boundary may lie.”

Customer and Partner Benefits of the Combination:

• Industry-First Coordinated Protection Between Endpoint and Network: This transaction brings two leading complementary security portfolios together to deliver coordinated protection and policy between endpoint and network. By combining policy, security filtering and information known at the endpoint with the network, Sophos will be able to provide improved security and visibility along with integrated management and reporting.
• Solutions Fuelled by Best-in-Class Threat and Data Protection and Web and Application Control: Solutions will offer complete protection to meet complex threats and malware challenges, especially from the web, applications and social engineering vectors that require full visibility and coordination, supported by SophosLabs and renowned malware and threat expertise.
• Enriched Channel Offerings: The combination of Sophos and Astaro will offer partners a complete and differentiated range of security solutions and services to meet customer needs not answered in the market today. Partners can deliver coordinated threat and data protection, and policy from any endpoint to any network boundary with solutions that can be deployed in any way: software, virtual, appliance, via a cloud services platform and backed by security updates from Sophos Live Protection for real-time, high-performance protection for end users no matter where they are.

Read more here >

About Sophos
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs—a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards. Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.

About Astaro
Astaro offers the most complete and easy to use network security appliances available. Astaro’s award-winning products provide the latest protection with the best total cost of ownership. Software, hardware and virtual appliance offerings provide users the flexibility to meet a wide variety of deployment scenarios. Distributed by a growing worldwide network of more than 2,500 resellers, more than 56,000 Astaro installations protect business, school and government networks against IT security threats. Astaro, headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany, offers free downloads of its products at www.astaro.com.

Just before the Easter weekend rolled around, the boxes were packed, picked up and shipped off to the new location. Thanks to a lot of hard work and good organization, operations were resumed after the weekend without much fuss.

The new office location is not far away from the old building, just over the street in fact, and spans 3000 square meters over 3 floors - enough space for further growth in the future. Aside from more floor space, the new office also has a great roof-top terrace with a splendid view.

We look forward to welcoming you to our new office in the near future. Until then, we have put together a small image gallery for you.

Picking the dream team to take over the Pacific Australia business was not an easy endeavor. Passion, dedication and enthusiasm were but a few elements we needed from the new Country Manager and Pre-Sales Engineer, other than the industry experience and channel and customer-based platform.

Karen Delaney joined Astaro in late March, coming from a 2-year stint as a Channel Manager with Sonicwall. With her extensive on-field experience in building and managing the channels, Karen takes on a challenging and promising job of re-energizing the Astaro channels in Pacific Australia, as well as building relationships with MSSP partners and customers.

Troy Cunningham joined Astaro in mid-April from Sonicwall where he worked closely with Karen. Troy’s deeply rooted technical expertise, which stems from his hands-on experience with various security products like Sonicwall, WatchGuard and Barracuda, will be a great advantage when getting Astaro’s innovative products out into the Pacific Australia market.

Welcome the Pacific Australia dream team and email them at anz@astaro.com.

The new revision 4 of the ASG 110/120 is now being shipped! The ASG 110/120 rev.4 is based on a new platform featuring an Intel processor which produces 1.8 Gbps of firewall throughput. There are also four fully configurable gigabit Ethernet ports, a faster 160 GB server grade hard drive and a new chassis designed for quieter and cooler operation. The unit itself is also physically smaller and can be either placed on a desk, wall mounted via holes in the bottom, or mounted in a rack using a new optional rack mount kit which is now also able to house the external power supply.

The part number and pricing for this new model remains unchanged. However, part numbers and pricing for the new rack mount kit and power supply have changed and are included in the updated Astaro price list which is available in the partner portal.

Documentation and updated collateral (datasheets, customer presentation etc.) which reflect the updates to this model have been made; you will find them in the partner portal and on the Astaro website accordingly.

We would like to invite you to join us on Tuesday, May 10th as Astaro's Community Development Manager, Jack Daniel, presents "Cloud Definitions You've Been Struggling to Understand" at 10:15 a.m. in the Mandalay Bay Room J. To make it even better, Astaro will also be hosting the following security discussions right at booth #960 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. For a FREE Expo pass or 25% off a Conference pass register here today and use Priority Code: CNYKNL01 – complements of Astaro.

To see a list of all the activities we will have at our booth, new announcements and presentation schedule, use the QR code or click the button below to visit our landing page before the event. Then check back after Interop is over for photos and lists of prize winners.

Learn more here

ComputerWorld brings together network security experts and enthusiasts for this annual 1 day conference to look into the current state of Internet security. The summit aims to impart knowledge to determine the strengths and weaknesses of global networks right now, especially in battling ever-growing sophisticated threats, and look into what should be done to strengthen infrastructures and corporate environments.

It also dives further on how far technology can take us in the protection of our digital assets, looking into best practices and strategies that work.

Apart from a booth space, Astaro’s Benjamin Hodge, Director for Technical Services, took the stage at Track A on Zero Day Defense where he shed more light on the threat landscape and what all companies should realistically consider when looking into their network security infrastructure.

The theme for AusCERT2011 is overexposed which is a reflection of the increasing exposure to information security risks that people, business and society face.

The conference will explore facets of these risks and bring together experts from Australia and around the world to provide insight and solutions to deal with these challenges.

Visit Astaro at booth G4 with WhiteGold Solutions.

More information

LinkedIn
Possibly the most ‘professional’ of all the social media sites, LinkedIn offers VARs some unique ways to reach your target audience. One way would be to start a professional group within LinkedIn that encourages members to initiate discussions and post news about that particular topic. For example, there is a marketing professionals group on LinkedIn where members share ideas about new marketing techniques, share stories and even pose questions about their own ideas and ask for opinions or suggestions for improvement. Creating this type of group would position your company as an expert in your area. If a group already exists which is a good match for your company; join the group and become an active member. Have a designated person start discussions and respond to others. It will only help elevate your company’s profile.

Facebook
Many business people view Facebook as the toy of the social media world. However, even business to business organizations like VARs can use Facebook as a marketing tool. Facebook is widely popular so why not use a tool that people are already using?

One way is to start a “fan page” that Facebook members can “like”. Then post links to industry news, post company news and events and again start conversations about topics you customers would find interesting. This keeps your company connected to your customers, potential customers and industry enthusiasts. Your company can also “like” the fan pages of the vendors you work with so your information is linked to theirs, increasing your exposure.

A second way to use Facebook is to create highly targeted pay-per-click ads. These ads work much like Google AdWords but instead of targeting keyword search terms they target a person’s profile information. So if you sell network infrastructure technology you can have your ad shown only to people who have IT in their job description. If you only operate in a certain area you can add qualifiers to better target your demographic using information supplied by the potential customer. Ads are relatively inexpensive and can run as long or a short a period as you desire. You can use Facebook to drive registration for an upcoming event or advertise a new product that you now offer.

Twitter
Many businesses have a difficult time finding the appropriate way to use Twitter. The character limitations along with its social nature lead some to believe the tool is better left to celebrities and teenagers. Once again, with a proper strategy Twitter can be successfully used for marketing and PR campaigns. The key is to use key terms people are following or trending terms.

For example, if your company is attending a tradeshow, tweeting about what is going on at your booth and using a hash-tag (#) along with the name of the conference will alert people looking for information about the conference you are there.

As your company’s account gains followers you can post links to new blog posts, promotions, news stories and so on. As long as your twitter feed doesn’t become overly promotional people will continue to follow you.

YouTube
At one point 75% of all searches on Google brought back video results from YouTube. These videos are often entertaining but they can also be informative. Posting short videos about your company’s services or products they offer can be a great way to get to the top of the search pile for a particular term. Also, you can link to these videos in marketing materials and embed them in your website create a more interactive experience for those looking for information about your company.

One caution: many companies salivate at the idea of creating a viral video and hold focus group and brainstorming sessions to come up with the corporate version of “squirrel on a skateboard” video. This is against the nature of viral videos, they tend to be spontaneous, entertaining or even gag inducing. If you are trying to make a viral video that is really an advertisement ask yourself if this is something you would normally forward to your friends.

With a little creativity, patience and thought any VAR can use these tools to help improve their marketing and increase their organization’s visibility.

Our new iPhone App for Astaro Mail Archiving is now available for download in the iTunes App Store - for free, no strings attached. With this app, users of the Astaro Mail Archiving Service have easy access to their Astaro e-mail archive from their iPhone. You can see your archived e-mails, conduct searches and edit e-mails just like working in your inbox while on the go.

If you are a user of Astaro Mail Archiving, have a try and download your iPhone App now! Or read more on our website.

Spread the word – and get your reward! Tell the world about Astaro Mail Archiving and the iPhone App and take part in our lottery to win one of three iTunes vouchers worth 50 USD! You can redeem it for apps, music, games or videos from the iTunes and App Store.

What you need to do: Tell people about Astaro Mail Archiving and the iPhone App by writing a blog article, posting to your community, commenting on your website, shooting and publishing a video, sharing photos, or, or, or – just be creative. But please include this line: “iPhone App for Astaro Mail Archiving now available in the App Store.” Then, send us your posting (with a link and screenshot) to feedback@astaro.com until 30th April 2011. The three best entries win! We keep our fingers crossed and wish you good luck!

General terms and conditions (PDF) apply.

Astaro is a finalist in the following categories:

• Cloud Computing/SaaS – Astaro Mail Archiving
• Security Software – Astaro Security Gateway V8
• Wireless Solutions – Astaro Wireless Security
• Best Support Initiative or Program of the Year – Astaro Support Program
• Best Support Team of the Year – Astaro Support Team

Read more here >

Here are 6 easy tips on how to do that - whether it is a home or business WLAN:

Use WPA2 encryption – Older security options like WEP can be broken in moments without special equipment or techniques using something as simple as a browser add-on or mobile phone application. WPA2 is the latest security algorithm which is included with virtually all wireless systems, and should be selected from the configuration screen.

Have a password longer than 10 characters – Even newer encryption schemes like WPA2 can be compromised using attacks which employ an automated process to try billions of possible passwords. Longer passwords don’t need to be hard to remember. Using a phrase like “makemywirelessnetworksecure” instead of a shorter, more complex password like “w1f1p4ss!” offers far more security, as the computing power to test and break such a long key cannot be realized.

In your password, add numbers, special characters and use upper and lower case characters – Complex passwords increase the amount of characters which must be considered when performing password cracking. For example, if your password consists of 4 digits and you only use numbers, there will be 10 times 4 (10,000) possibilities. If you additionally use the alphabet in only small cases, you will get 36 times 4 possibilities (1,6 million). Forcing a cracking program to choose from 104 characters times 11 digits results in 15,394,540,563,150,776,827,904 possibilities. This increases the time needed to crack such a password from seconds to millions of years.

Don’t use standard SSIDs – Many wireless routers ship with a default wireless network name (also known as the SSID) like “netgear” or “linksys” which most users do not bother to change. This SSID is used as part of the password by the WPA2 encryption. Not changing this allows hackers to prepare password look-up lists for common SSIDs (rainbow tables) which speed up the password cracking process drastically, enabling them to test millions of passwords per second. Having a custom SSID drastically increases the work and time needed to attempt to compromise your wireless network.

Leave personal information out of your SSID – You don’t want to give hackers a way to know that your network is worth trying to compromise. Putting “John’s House” as the SSID provides information which might be useful to a nosy, tech-saavy neighbor or someone targeting your business. Don’t give hackers a way to see whether a wireless network is yours, or the one of the shop around the corner, use something vague which doesn’t identify you or your location.

Tune the range of the radio – Modern access points have multiple antennas and transmit power, letting their signal reach far beyond the walls of the places they are providing access to. Some products let you adjust the transmission power of the radio using menu options. This provides a way to limit how far outside your location someone can pick up your wireless signal and work on compromising your network.

For companies, however, the tips above are a good start, but of course they have a greater challenge to master and business oriented wireless security solutions are generally still inflexible, expensive and complex. It would be fatal though to fall back on consumer products as they naturally provide a much lower level of security than enterprise solutions! If you are searching for a wireless networking solution for your business that is secure and easy to deploy, check out Astaro Wireless Security.

During the Interop conference in Las Vegas Astaro's Jack Daniel will present "Cloud Definitions you’ve been Struggling to Understand". In this presentation Jack will explain common cloud computing terminology and discuss some common misconceptions about cloud computing as well as highlight some interesting cloud technologies you and your business may not even know exist.

The presentation will take place on:
Tuesday, May 10th at 10:15 a.m.
Mandalay Bay Room J.

Use registration code CNYKNL01 when registering to receive a free expo pass or 25% off a conference pass so you can see this informative presentation. Then visit Astaro at booth #960.

With Astaro Log Management, you are able to search all logs across all your systems with a single click, reducing troubleshooting time by up to 80%. The system can automatically alert administrators to repeated failed logins, application errors etc., so they are able to fix IT issues before users even notice. Additionally, it will help organizations comply with PCI standards and other regulations..

» How To Get Your Astaro Log Management BETA

During the ASG V8.2 Beta period, which will run until approximately late June, we would like to encourage you to post your impressions, feedback, bug reports and all the associated issues you like (and don't like) in our user forum. At the end of the beta, we will reward our most active contributors with great prizes!
You can find more information such as our datasheet and 2 Minute Explainer video on Log Management on our website.

I'm looking forward to your feedback. Enjoy testing!

Kathrin Möschle
Product Marketing Manager
 

Train yourself, or get trained
All vendors should offer courses to partners to get them up-to-speed on their products and services. These trainings can be a combination of in person, on demand, videos, or even full day courses. These training session can help you better understand the products you are now offering and in some cases offer advice on how to attract particular types of customers that you may wish to target. Whatever the vendor offers you should take advantage of it.

Talk to other members of partner program
When joining a new partner program it is wise to get to know the other members of the program. They will offer insight into the vendor’s practices and policies as well as tips on how to be successful with this vendor. If you chose your partner program wisely the vendor won’t be over distributed so other partners won’t view you as a threat or as competition. Instead you will be able to collaborate with other partners on a consistent basis and work with one another for mutual success. Start getting to know other partners when you first join the program and you will make valuable business contacts that will help your business thrive in all different aspects.

Become an expert on how products serve particular vertical
It is not enough to understand how a product works; successful partners also know how the products solve specific problems. If your company already has a specific vertical expertise, ask the vendor if they have messaging or information about their product satisfying the needs of that vertical. Customer success stories are another great resource. Ask if they have any customer stories that can be shared and talk to the partners you are developing relationships with to determine if they have any customer references you can talk to so you can understand their needs and how this product satisfied them.

Take advantage of marketing dollars and resources
And finally, once you join a partner program ask to set up a meeting with the marketing department to discuss what kinds of programs they offer. Events, email marketing campaigns, co-op dollars and other programs designed with you in mind will only serve to help you find more customers. Take advantage of these opportunities and watch your business grow faster.

In order to present what is new at Astaro, we not only had demonstration terminals that had preview versions of all new solutions to come in 2011 (Astaro Application Control, Astaro Log Management and Astaro Endpoint Security), but also workshops on the second level of our booth four times a day! Judging by how many interested participants came for every session, our news as well as the older solutions seem to be creating much excitement! Also, the feedback we received from partners and customers whenever we talked about the Astaro Security Wall was very encouraging: Our strategy is what they are looking for.

At the end of each day, partners and customers were invited to join us for the traditional Orange Hour, to sit together over some beer and finger food. Those Orange Hours could have gone on all nights, as we had a great atmosphere and even further technical discussions and demonstrations, but at some point, you have to cut it – when the food is empty.

We are looking forward to seeing all again at the next tradeshow!

In addition to our booth activities Astaro was nominated for several awards from SC Magazine and the 7th annual Info Security’s Global Product Awards. In all we were a finalist in 7 categories between the two award programs and took home the first prize in the category Best Integrated Security/UTM product for the Astaro Security Gateway V8 in the Info Security’s Global Product Awards.

• Education programs are hardly a security ‘silver bullet’
• Astaro Puts Focus on UTM Solutions
• Astaro Introduces Three New IT Security Products
• Astaro Raises the Network Security Bar with New Products
• Astaro introduces three IT security products

What is most impressive about the review isn’t the spectacular comments regarding the technology it is what they have listed as the negative: nothing. There was only one other company that didn’t have any negatives listed but their product was a purely web content management product.

UpDate 7.510 Details

Remarks:

• Configuration will not be upgraded
• System will be rebooted

News:

• Enabled upgrade to V8 for Wireless and HA/Cluster systems

Fixes:

• [14097] HTTPS scanning only applies for the first network in list
• [14594] After update to v7.506, German online-help is not reachable any more
• [16088] No entries in the Packetfilter Log (HA/Cluster Mode) during some situations

Download Information
Manual Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v7/up2date/u2d-sys-7.510.tgz.gpg
Size: ~45 MB
MD5: 326a5c779dba1d83ef734470db61b30b

Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro ASG Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[7.510] One-Touch Upgrade").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
  

Regards,
Angelo Comazzetto
Astaro Product Manager

Luckily one-third of them have their data restored already, but the remaining users will most probably have to wait for another 12 hours to get their e-mails back.

Ok, most Gmail users have their account for private purposes – but still: Imagine being cut off from your inbox for two days – and not only from your inbox but from virtually every e-mail you have ever received. And now imagine how such a loss would affect your business and please be honest – don’t just say that this could never happen to your systems.

True, if you backup your data (and yes, you always should) you will have at least something to restore from and get back all your data. But again, restores are time consuming and complex.

However, if I would be affected by an outage of my e-mail system, Astaro Mail Archiving  would save my day. With my Archive Client (whether using a web-browser, MS Outlook or even an iPhone) I always have access to every e-mail I ever received or sent - whether from yesterday, last month or even years back.

Obviously, archiving solutions are mainly built to focus on business needs like optimizing workflows, helping e-mail management processes and complying with legal requirements. But if all goes wrong with your e-mail system, Astaro Mail Archiving just shows another built-by-design feature: Rock-solid, reliable access from everywhere to your most valuable communication data -  your e-mails.
 

Please just search the Appstore for “Astaro Mail Archiving” and download the app to your iPhone or follow this link.
From now on you can use your iPhone to run searches and process your e-mails just like you are used to from your Outlook plugin or the Web frontend. It is free of cost but please be aware that you need an Astaro Mail Archiving license to really use the app.

You don’t know Astaro Mail Archiving yet? It is a hosted mail archiving solution meeting all requirements in terms of legal compliance, data protection, easy handling for users and administrators topped by transparent pricing. The service is set up in less than 15 minutes and instantly provides customers with endless storage for an unlimited time. Please feel free to try: www.astaro.com/ama

We would like to show you the new iPhone App live and invite you to join our demonstration webinar.

To follow the webinar on Tuesday 15th March 2011

• in German language at 11am CET please register here
• in English language at 4pm CET please register here

We are excited to welcome partners, customers and journalists at our booth and to introduce our upcoming innovations: Astaro Application Control, Astaro Log Management and Astaro Endpoint Security. We also see a lot of new faces, system integrators as well as end users, wanting to learn more about Astaro and our UTM solutions! Judging by how every single table is occupied with interested customers, our news seems to be creating much excitement!

For all those who cannot visit us in Hanover, you may find some impressions of the event below. Alternatively you can follow us on Twitter to receive the latest news from the CeBIT in realtime.

We suggest that you set the pattern download and installation intervals to 15 minutes, which is the default. This option can be found under the following path: Webadmin >> Management >> Up2Date >> Pattern download/installation interval.

If this has already been set, there is no need to make any further adjustments.
 

Date: 2011-02-10

New rules:
18458 <-> BOTNET-CNC Night Dragon initial beacon (botnet-cnc.rules, High)
18459 <-> BOTNET-CNC Night Dragon keepalive message (botnet-cnc.rules, High)
Updated rules:
15357 <-> WEB-CLIENT Adobe PDF JBIG2 remote code execution attempt (web-client.rules, High)
 

Date: 2011-02-08

New rules:
18336 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string gbot/2.3 (blacklist.rules, High)
18337 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string iamx/3.11 (blacklist.rules, High)
18338 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string NSISDL/1.2 (blacklist.rules, High)
18339 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string NSIS_Inetc (blacklist.rules, High)
18340 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string ClickAdsByIE 0.7.5 (blacklist.rules, High)
18341 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string UtilMind HTTPGet (blacklist.rules, High)
18342 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string NSIS_DOWNLOAD (blacklist.rules, High)
18343 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string WSEnrichment (blacklist.rules, High)
18344 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string FSD (blacklist.rules, High)
18345 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Macrovision_DM_2.4.15 (blacklist.rules, High)
18346 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string GPRecover (blacklist.rules, High)
18347 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string AutoIt (blacklist.rules, High)
18348 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Opera/9.80 Pesto/2.2.15 (blacklist.rules, High)
18349 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Flipopia (blacklist.rules, High)
18350 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string GabPath (blacklist.rules, High)
18351 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string GPUpdater (blacklist.rules, High)
18352 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string PinballCorp-BSAI/VER_STR_COMMA (blacklist.rules, High)
18353 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string SelectRebates (blacklist.rules, High)
18354 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string opera/8.11 (blacklist.rules, High)
18355 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Se2011 (blacklist.rules, High)
18356 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string random (blacklist.rules, High)
18357 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Setup Factory (blacklist.rules, High)
18358 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string NSIS_INETLOAD (blacklist.rules, High)
18359 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Shareaza (blacklist.rules, High)
18360 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Oncues (blacklist.rules, High)
18361 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Downloader1.1 (blacklist.rules, High)
18362 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Search Toolbar 1.1 (blacklist.rules, High)
18363 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string GPRecover (blacklist.rules, High)
18364 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string msndown (blacklist.rules, High)
18365 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Agentcc (blacklist.rules, High)
18366 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string OCInstaller (blacklist.rules, High)
18367 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string FPRecover (blacklist.rules, High)
18368 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Our_Agent (blacklist.rules, High)
18369 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string iexp-get (blacklist.rules, High)
18370 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Mozilla Windows MSIE (blacklist.rules, High)
18371 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string QvodDown (blacklist.rules, High)
18372 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string StubInstaller (blacklist.rules, High)
18373 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Installer (blacklist.rules, High)
18374 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string MSDN SurfBear (blacklist.rules, High)
18375 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string HTTP Wininet (blacklist.rules, High)
18376 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Trololo (blacklist.rules, High)
18377 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string malware (blacklist.rules, High)
18378 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string AutoHotkey (blacklist.rules, High)
18379 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string AskInstallChecker (blacklist.rules, High)
18380 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string FPUpdater (blacklist.rules, High)
18381 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Travel Update (blacklist.rules, High)
18382 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string WMUpdate (blacklist.rules, High)
18383 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string GPInstaller (blacklist.rules, High)
18384 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Install Stub (blacklist.rules, High)
18385 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string HTTPCSDCENTER (blacklist.rules, High)
18386 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string AHTTPConnection (blacklist.rules, High)
18387 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string dwplayer (blacklist.rules, High)
18388 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string RookIE/1.0 (blacklist.rules, High)
18389 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string 3653Client (blacklist.rules, High)
18390 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Delphi 5.x (blacklist.rules, High)
18391 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string MyLove (blacklist.rules, High)
18392 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string qixi (blacklist.rules, High)
18393 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string vyre32 (blacklist.rules, High)
18394 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string OCRecover (blacklist.rules, High)
18395 <-> BLACKLIST USER-AGENT known malicious user-agent string Duckling/1.0 (blacklist.rules, High)
18396 <-> WEB-CLIENT Windows Hypervisor denial of service vfd download attempt (web-client.rules, High)
18397 <-> MISC HP DDMI Agent spoofing - command execution (misc.rules, High)
Updated rules:
3535 <-> WEB-CLIENT GIF transfer (web-client.rules, Low)
3551 <-> WEB-CLIENT .hta download attempt (web-client.rules, Low)
3633 <-> WEB-CLIENT bitmap transfer (web-client.rules, Low)
4194 <-> WEB-CLIENT multipacket CBO CBL CBM file transfer start (web-client.rules, Low)
4678 <-> WEB-CLIENT quicktime movie file transfer (web-client.rules, Low)
5740 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft HTML help workshop file .hhp download attempt (web-client.rules, Low)
5741 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft HTML help workshop buffer overflow attempt (web-client.rules, High)
6688 <-> WEB-CLIENT PNG file transfer (web-client.rules, Low)
9845 <-> WEB-CLIENT M3U File Download Detected (web-client.rules, Low)
13465 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Works file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
13515 <-> WEB-CLIENT Quicktime user agent (web-client.rules, Low)
13584 <-> WEB-CLIENT csv file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
13801 <-> WEB-CLIENT RTF file download (web-client.rules, Low)
13911 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft search file download attempt (web-client.rules, Low)
13982 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Powerpoint file download attempt (web-client.rules, Low)
13983 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Office eps file download (web-client.rules, Low)
14017 <-> WEB-CLIENT MPEG Layer 3 playlist file request (web-client.rules, Low)
14018 <-> WEB-CLIENT PLS multimedia playlist file request (web-client.rules, Low)
14086 <-> BACKDOOR Adware.Win32.Agent.BM runtime detection 1 (backdoor.rules, High)
14087 <-> BACKDOOR Adware.Win32.Agent.BM runtime detection 2 (backdoor.rules, High)
15123 <-> WEB-CLIENT Rich Text Format file request (web-client.rules, Low)
15184 <-> CHAT MSN messenger http link transmission attempt (chat.rules, High)
15294 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Visio file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
15426 <-> WEB-CLIENT MAKI file request (web-client.rules, Low)
15463 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Excel file request (web-client.rules, Low)
15464 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Excel file request (web-client.rules, Low)
15471 <-> WEB-CLIENT asp file upload (web-client.rules, Low)
15516 <-> WEB-CLIENT AVI multimedia file request (web-client.rules, Low)
15586 <-> WEB-CLIENT Powerpoint file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
15587 <-> WEB-CLIENT Word file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
15865 <-> WEB-CLIENT MP4 file request (web-client.rules, Low)
15921 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft media format file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
15922 <-> WEB-CLIENT mp3 file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
15945 <-> WEB-CLIENT RSS file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
16143 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft asf file download (web-client.rules, Low)
16219 <-> WEB-CLIENT Adobe Director file format transfer (web-client.rules, Low)
16425 <-> WEB-CLIENT request for Portable Executable binary file (web-client.rules, Low)
16473 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Windows Movie Maker project file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
16474 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Compound File Binary v3 file download (web-client.rules, Low)
16475 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Compound File Binary v4 file download (web-client.rules, Low)
16476 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft .MSProducer file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
16477 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft .MSProducerZ file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
16478 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft .MSProducerBF file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
16691 <-> WEB-CLIENT PLF playlist file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
17116 <-> WEB-CLIENT asx file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
17229 <-> WEB-CLIENT Tiff file download - little-endian (web-client.rules, Low)
17230 <-> WEB-CLIENT Tiff file download - big-endian (web-client.rules, Low)
17241 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft wmv file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
17259 <-> WEB-CLIENT .mov file request (web-client.rules, Low)
17314 <-> WEB-CLIENT OLE Document file download (web-client.rules, Low)
17359 <-> WEB-CLIENT xbm image file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
17366 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Help Workshop HPJ OPTIONS section buffer overflow attempt (web-client.rules, High)
17394 <-> WEB-CLIENT GIF file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
17426 <-> WEB-CLIENT RAT file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
17491 <-> SPECIFIC-THREATS Microsoft Word mso.dll LsCreateLine memory corruption attempt (specific-threats.rules, High)
17547 <-> WEB-CLIENT Apple Quicktime SMIL transfer (web-client.rules, Low)
17552 <-> WEB-CLIENT Adobe Pagemaker file request (web-client.rules, Low)
17600 <-> WEB-CLIENT .xul document retrieval (web-client.rules, Low)
17751 <-> WEB-CLIENT OpenType Font file download request (web-client.rules, Low)
17809 <-> WEB-CLIENT quicktime movie file transfer (web-client.rules, Low)
18196 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Internet Explorer CSS importer use-after-free attempt (web-client.rules, High)
18240 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Internet Explorer CSS importer use-after-free attempt (web-client.rules, High)
18243 <-> SPECIFIC-THREATS Microsoft Windows 7 IIS7.5 FTPSVC buffer overflow attempt (specific-threats.rules, High)
18265 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Office thumbnail bitmap invalid biClrUsed attempt (web-client.rules, High)
18335 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft MHTML XSS attempt (web-client.rules, High)


 

Date: 2011-02-01

New rules:
18321 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX SonicWall Aventail EPInterrogator ActiveX clsid access (web-activex.rules, High)
18322 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX SonicWall Aventail EPInterrogator ActiveX function call access (web-activex.rules, High)
18323 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX SonicWall Aventail EPInstaller ActiveX clsid access (web-activex.rules, High)
18324 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX SonicWall Aventail EPInstaller ActiveX function call access (web-activex.rules, High)
18325 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX Image Viewer CP Gold 6 ActiveX clsid access (web-activex.rules, High)
18326 <-> FTP ProFTPD mod_site_misc module directory traversal attempt (ftp.rules, High)
18327 <-> SCADA Kingview HMI heap overflow attempt (scada.rules, High)
18328 <-> WEB-CLIENT Adobe Flash Player dwmapi.dll dll-load exploit attempt (web-client.rules, High)
18329 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft WMI Administrator Tools Object Viewer ActiveX function call access (web-activex.rules, High)
18330 <-> NETBIOS Adobe Flash Player dwmapi.dll dll-load exploit attempt (netbios.rules, High)
18331 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Office Visio DXF variable name overflow attempt (web-client.rules, High)
18332 <-> WEB-CLIENT Mozilla Firefox JS Web Worker arbitrary code execution attempt (web-client.rules, High)
18333 <-> WEB-MISC phpBook date command execution attempt (web-misc.rules, High)
18334 <-> WEB-MISC phpBook mail command execution attempt (web-misc.rules, High)
18335 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft MHTML XSS attempt (web-client.rules, High)
Updated rules:
1324 <-> EXPLOIT ssh CRC32 overflow /bin/sh (exploit.rules, High)
1325 <-> EXPLOIT ssh CRC32 overflow filler (exploit.rules, High)
1326 <-> EXPLOIT ssh CRC32 overflow NOOP (exploit.rules, High)
1327 <-> EXPLOIT ssh CRC32 overflow (exploit.rules, High)
17416 <-> ORACLE Database Intermedia Denial of Service Attempt (oracle.rules, Medium)
17417 <-> ORACLE Database Intermedia Denial of Service Attempt (oracle.rules, Medium)
18241 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft WMI Administrator Tools Object Viewer ActiveX clsid access (web-activex.rules, High)
18242 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft WMI Administrator Tools Object Viewer ActiveX function call access (web-activex.rules, High)



 

Date: 2011-01-25
New rules:
18303 <-> SPECIFIC-THREATS Microsoft Internet Explorer script action handler overflow attempt (specific-threats.rules, High)
18304 <-> WEB-CLIENT Microsoft Internet Explorer span tag memory corruption attempt (web-client.rules, High)
18305 <-> SPECIFIC-THREATS Microsoft Internet Explorer span tag memory corruption attempt (specific-threats.rules, High)
18306 <-> SPECIFIC-THREATS Microsoft Internet Explorer span tag memory corruption attempt (specific-threats.rules, High)
18307 <-> SPECIFIC-THREATS Microsoft Internet Explorer frameset memory corruption attempt (specific-threats.rules, High)
18308 <-> WEB-CLIENT Adobe Acrobat Reader icc mluc interger overflow attempt (web-client.rules, High)
18309 <-> WEB-CLIENT VML fill method overflow attempt (web-client.rules, High)
18310 <-> SMTP Microsoft Office RTF parsing remote code execution attempt (smtp.rules, High)
18311 <-> WEB-MISC Novell iManager getMultiPartParameters unauthorized file upload attempt (web-misc.rules, High)
18312 <-> EXPLOIT Subversion 1.0.2 get-dated-rev buffer overflow over http attempt (exploit.rules, High)
18313 <-> SPECIFIC-THREATS Microsoft Internet Explorer createTextRange code execution attempt (specific-threats.rules, High)
18314 <-> SPECIFIC-THREATS NETBIOS DCERPC NCACN-IP-TCP lsarpc LsarLookupSids lsa_io_trans_name heap overflow attempt (specific-threats.rules, Low)
18315 <-> NETBIOS DCERPC NCACN-IP-TCP wkssvc NetrValidateName2 overflow attempt (netbios.rules, High)
18316 <-> SPECIFIC-THREATS NETBIOS DCERPC NCACN-IP-TCP wkssvc NetrValidateName2 attempt (netbios.rules, Low)
18317 <-> SMTP RCPT TO IPSwitch proxy overflow attempt (smtp.rules, High)
18318 <-> WEB-MISC TLSv1 Client Change Cipher Spec message (web-misc.rules, Low)
18319 <-> SPECIFIC-THREATS NETBIOS DCERPC NCACN-IP-TCP lsarpc LsarLookupSids lsa_io_trans_name heap overflow attempt (specific-threats.rules, Low)
18320 <-> SPECIFIC-THREATS WINS association context validation overflow attempt (specific-threats.rules, Medium)
Updated rules:
6584 <-> NETBIOS DCERPC NCACN-IP-TCP rras RasRpcSubmitRequest overflow attempt (netbios.rules, High)
8925 <-> NETBIOS DCERPC NCACN-IP-TCP wkssvc NetrAddAlternateComputerName overflow attempt (netbios.rules, High)
10603 <-> NETBIOS DCERPC NCACN-IP-TCP dns R_DnssrvUpdateRecord2 overflow attempt (netbios.rules, High)
10900 <-> NETBIOS DCERPC NCACN-IP-TCP dns R_DnssrvEnumRecords overflow attempt (netbios.rules, High)
12220 <-> EXPLOIT IBM Informix Dynamic Server long username buffer overflow attempt (exploit.rules, High)
12269 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft Visual Basic 6 TLIApplication ActiveX clsid access (web-activex.rules, High)
12270 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft Visual Basic 6 TLIApplication ActiveX function call (web-activex.rules, High)
12271 <-> DELETED WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft Visual Basic 6 TLIApplication ActiveX function call access (deleted.rules, High)
12272 <-> DELETED WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft Visual Basic 6 TLIApplication ActiveX function call unicode access (deleted.rules, High)
12417 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft Visual FoxPro ActiveX clsid access (web-activex.rules, High)
12424 <-> RPC MIT Kerberos kadmind rpc RPCSEC_GSS buffer overflow attempt (rpc.rules, High)
12450 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft Agent Control ActiveX function call access (web-activex.rules, High)
15670 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft Video 6 ActiveX clsid access (web-activex.rules, High)
15671 <-> WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft Video 6 ActiveX function call (web-activex.rules, High)
15904 <-> DELETED WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft Video 6 ActiveX function call access (deleted.rules, High)
15905 <-> DELETED WEB-ACTIVEX Microsoft Video 6 ActiveX function call unicode access (deleted.rules, High)
15930 <-> NETBIOS Microsoft Windows SMB malformed process ID high field remote code execution attempt (netbios.rules, Medium)
16499 <-> DELETED NETBIOS DCERPC NCACN-IP-TCP dns R_DnssrvUpdateRecord2 overflow attempt (deleted.rules, High)
16500 <-> DELETED NETBIOS DCERPC NCACN-IP-TCP dns R_DnssrvEnumRecords overflow attempt (deleted.rules, High)
16523 <-> POLICY PDF with click-to-launch executable (policy.rules, Low)
17047 <-> DELETED NETBIOS Microsoft Windows DNS Server RPC management interface buffer overflow attempt (deleted.rules, High)
17326 <-> EXPLOIT Citrix Program Neighborhood Client buffer overflow attempt (exploit.rules, High)

We also reward our testers! Several of the top contributers and testers will receive great Astaro swag for their efforts! You can win access points, Astaro RED's, and your own ASG appliance for personal home use. For all the details of the 8.200 Beta program, and information on the release itself, read on!

General Beta Information
Why Participate?
You get to see and play with things before they are Generally Available, and have a chance to shape features and functionality based on your comments and findings. We closely monitor all our Beta feedback, and over the years have worked hard to listen to our market in order to build products that people like you want to buy. By helping us, we gain insight as to how we are doing and have the chance to identify bugs, polish some features, and make corrections in hundreds of different installation scenarios which is extremely useful to our QA and testing efforts. You get to see new features early, and we get an increased test landscape.

How to be a Beta tester:
No forms, no pesky emails or submission process with a bunch of information to provide. We know that's not fun. To test ASG 8.200 Beta, just download the latest Beta ISO image via our forums (first version is 8.160), burn it to a CD and install it to your ASG software installation or appliance. Please be sure to download the appropriate ISO for your intended use platform. Once you are using the 8.200 Beta, you can continue to use Up2Date and install the next Beta releases for 8.200 without needing to re-install again. Just restore your backup file and you are up and running for the entire 8.200 Beta. So as to make your life even easiser, we will release a final Up2Date package at the end of the 8.200 Beta which will take your installation to the GA release of 8.200, saving you a re-install and restore once again.

How you can contribute:
During the period of the Beta for 8.200 (which will run until approximately late June), we would encourage you to post your impressions, feedback, bug reports, and all the associated things you like (and don't like!) in our offical 8.200 Beta forums.  At the end of the Beta, we will reward our most active contributors; there are great prizes and rewards to be had!

Astaro Beta 8.200 Download Information:
For the first release of the Beta, version 8.160 is the version we'll start with. Future updates and releases will be communicated soley through the forums and not via this blog, so check there often for all the updates and news around the 8.200 release! You will find many answers to early questions, test license downloads, and general Beta information can be found in the launch overview for 8.200 here.

Initial Beta 8.200 Links (V8.160):

ASG ISO for Software/Virtual appliances (Your own hardware):
Download:  ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/beta/asg-8.160-7.1.iso
ISO size: 466Mb (489097216 bytes)
ISO md5sum: 8c9a113d75159bef1484b6339a577090
ISO sha1sum: a33ed194e0d25f2f0641c5f9c09536e40648d8be

SSI ISO for Astaro Hardware appliances (eg. an ASG 220):
Download: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/beta/ssi-8.160-7.1.iso
ISO size: 468M (490358784 bytes)
ISO md5sum: de678b45f2e289d54e180943b779e51f
ISO sha1sum: a60c3c2c85bb457ad1571e29c5f627fbf0dabbcb 

 8.200 Beta Feature Quick-Overview*
*Note that the Beta is subject to have features re-worked or changed, entirely new things may be added at anytime, and features which are not up to our standards may be delayed. There will always be new things and changes to test throughout the Beta.
Major New Things

• Network Visibility and Application Control (Layer 7 Classification/Next Generation Firewall)
• New Web Security Reporting
• User Authentication (Windows Client) for Policies and Reporting

Minor New Things

• 3G/UMTS USB modem interface
• KVM virtio support
• WiFi improvements
• Web Application Security improvements
• Integration of Log Management cloud service
• IPv6 support for SMTP proxy and HTTP proxy in "full transparent" mode
• Packetfilter optimization (IPSet)
• HTTP proxy multi-threading performance optimization

8.200 Beta Extended Feature Overview*
*Extended documentation with feature descriptions, along with Release Notes, will be posted for the GA release.

Network Visibility and Application Control (L7 classification)
Also known as "Next Generation Firewall", this new classification engine analyzes all network traffic and determines which "Application" this traffic is for. "Application" in this context can simply be a protocol (e.g. SSH, DNS, Bittorrent), but in many cases will be quite specific, like HTTP (Web) traffic will be classified in fine-grained way for Web Applications like Facebook or various Google Apps.
You can enable this at Web Security >> Network Visibility. This information will be used (so far) for:
    Web Security >> Network Visibility >> Application Control Rules: Block/Log application usage.
    Reporting >> Network Usage >> Accounting: Top Apps, Top Categories, Top Users.
    Interfaces & Routing >> Quality of Service: Shape traffic per application.
    Dashboard: Enhanced Bandwidth monitor (Show User/Hostname/Apps)

-This is a superset of the functionality offered of the old IM/P2P classifier and thus completely replaces it.

New Web Security Reporting
The Web Security Reporting was completely overhauled to give a better user experience tailored with how you expect to see data and get the information you are looking for easily.

•     Reactive filtering (filters build as you click)
•     Save custom filters, subscribe to periodical mail reports based on saved filters
•     Everything clickable, sortable, no dead ends
•     Search Engine report (search terms, users)

User Authentication (Windows Client) for Policies and Reporting
With the new Astaro Authentication Client (AAC) for Windows users can directly authenticate to the ASG.
This has two advantages:

1.     Reporting will display user names instead of raw IPs if possible
2.     You can use User Network and Group Network objects in e.g. packetfilter rules and they will only match for logged in users

(You can get similar benefits from a combination of static DHCP and DNS mappings, but with probably much more effort)
See Users >> Client Authentication for the configuration. You can also download the client there or via the User Portal.
You can also use this authentication for the HTTP proxy. Choose Transparent Client Authentication as the operational mode.

WAS (Web-Application Security) Improvements:

Form Hardening
Form hardening will check HTML form data submitted by clients. It ensures that clients do not submit fields they weren't offered, will make basic sanity checks of the submitted values according to their HTML specification.

Reputation-based Client blocking
The Web Application Firewall can now check clients against certain blacklists.
Block clients with bad reputation will currently block open proxies by using certain DNSBLs.
Block anonymizer proxies uses a static list updated by the pattern mechanism.

Sitemap-XML Support
If you have a Google Sitemap you can now use it in your Web Application Firewall profile to specify valid entry pages for URL Hardening. You can either upload the file or tell the ASG to download it from a given URL. In the latter case the ASG can also check the URL periodically for updates.

UMTS Modem Interface
Support for 3G/UMTS modems is now official (it was already present in 8.100 but not officially supported and only visible if you had a modem connected). Configure as usual over Interfaces & Routing >> Interfaces, type 3G/UMTS. For now, newly plugged-in modems will only be detected during boot-up, so you need to reboot your ASG if you connect a new one.

KVM performance optimization
When run in KVM, ASG now has support for VirtIO devices (disks/NICs), which results in increased performance for I/O operations.

Wireless Improvements
Firmware-side:

•     New WLAN driver, uses an Open-Source driver now instead of a proprietary vendor driver
•     802.11r Roaming
•     Rebootless reconfiguration (for majority of cases)

ASG-side:

•     SSID-to-AP Group Matrix
•     Ability to group APs
•     Push configuration without disconnect
•     Perform key negotiation only when confirming AP

Integration of Log Management Service
Astaro has a new cloud-based Log Management service, which is integrated with ASG 8.2. A preview version of this service is available and can be used free of charge with this beta. Currently the Log Management service is planned to be included with any ASG subscription.
See Log Management and more information can be found here.

IPv6 Improvements

•     IPv6 support for SMTP proxy
•     IPv6 support for HTTP proxy in "full transparent" mode
•     ICMPv6 service definitions

Packet filter optimization (IPset)
Packet filter rules that contain list of networks/IPs, either explicit (via network/DNS groups) or implicit (via lists in WebAdmin) now use IPset (IP sets) to reduce the number of generated iptables rules. This should improve memory consumption and performance.
This affects both user-generated packet filter rules (Network Security >> Firewall) and auto-generated rules (e.g. via Allowed Networks for services or Auto packet filter rules for VPNs).

Fixed Issues
Of course we also fixed a few bugs in this release. Here a list of the some of the most prominent current ones:
    [14019] SMTP relay attempts shown as webadmin logins
    [14073] WAF: SSL support for multiple DNS names (subjectAlternativeName certificates)
    [14186] WebAdmin last failed session count doesn't match executive report
    [14782] UTF-8 characters in realname of imported keys are not displayed correctly
    [14820] Virus uploads don't get blocked if XSS or SQL Injection filter (mod_security) is enabled
    [15438] Sortable tables and Batch-Operation use same GUI element
    [15440] Improve input validation for advanced bridge settings
    [15654] Packets mislabeled as connections in reporting
    [15972] Exceptions do not work for Cross Site Scripting, SQL-Injection or Cookie Signing
    [16103] missing table header at NAT and SNAT/DNAT
    [16153] Radius secret containing backtick character (`) doesn't work
    [16255] Exception for Certificate Trust Check does not work in transparent mode
    [16438] Self signed certificate in chain and an exception for all requests going to this category will not work for some banking sites

Enjoy the 8.200 Beta, we look forward to working with you throughout it.

Angelo Comazzetto
Astaro Product Manager

Details
Remarks:
* Your system will reboot after installation is complete.

News:
* This is a maintenance release

Fixes:
[15306] ACC-Daemon takes up to 100% CPU, no connection to any AxG-devices

Details:
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ACC/v2.1/up2...-2.202.tgz.gpg

Download Information:
   Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ACC/v2/up2date/u2d-sys-2.202.tgz.gpg
   Size: ~41MB
   Md5 : 9a57c0e05608281585b9ceeb7781ead5

Astaro ACC Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ACC V2 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[2.202] Using Central Object Definitions").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There are also demo servers for public use anytime at http://demo.astaro.com

Enjoy,

Angelo Comazzetto
Product Manager

More information is available at http://www.isc.org/software/bind/advisories/cve-2011-0414.

Astaro products are not affected by this issue however. Our vision as a company has always been to deliver products with the highest level of security. One aspect of this concept is minimalism: We only integrate applications, libraries, components and modules which are absolutely necessary. Everything else is not used. In this way, we significantly decrease the probability of our products being affected by security issues.
 

„Astaro Mail Archiving is a specialized solution for archiving e-mails which is more than perfect for the job. No special, expensive hardware is required and our employees find it as easy and self-explanatory as using Outlook," explains Stefan Haake, Head of Accounting and Finance.

In our interview he described what he likes most about Astaro Mail Archiving:

• Self-explanatory user interface
• Fast search function
• Minimal maintenance and administration requirements
• Optimal adaptability to existing systems

By using Astaro Mail Archiving Services, Diebel Speditions GmbH saves on hardware and energy costs whilst at the same time fulfilling all legal requirements regarding archiving and data protection.

Please read the complete article here: http://www.astaro.com/resources/astaro-success-stories/hosted-mail-archiving-hassle-free
 

But please be aware that you need an Astaro Mail Archiving account to really benefit.

With this App you can access your e-mail archive from your iPhone and see the newest e-mails, search the archive, view attachments and run favorite (saved) searches. Quick and easy. Just like you are used to from your Outlook plugin or Web frontend. 

We will keep you posted as soon as the iPhone App is ready for download. Stay tuned!

PS: You don’t have an e-mail archive yet? It is never too late to test. The easiest way is to order a free 30-day-trial here: www.astaro.com/ama.
 

Astaro provides many options for installing on our own official hardware, your provided hardware, or your virtual VMware installation. Please be sure you get the correct image for what you are wanting to install on/with. For example, there are three 8.102 ISO images for ASG Hardware appliances, one normal ISO (for burning to CD or using in a non-VMware virtualization product), and one for each version of the Astaro Smart Installer which allows you to install images using a special USB drive that contains a CD-Rom emulation chip.

*Please note that the Astaro Smart Installer is not a normal USB stick and you will not be able to burn one of those images to a non-ASI device.

ASG 8.102 Images
ASG Hardware Appliances
General CD
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/hardware_appliance/iso/ssi-8.102-2.1.iso
Size: ~468MB
MD5: 159b7e7f63e8841e99e68f3aacc9dcd7

Astaro Smart Installer V2
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/hardware_appliance/smart_installer/v2/ssi-8.102-2.1-ASI-V2.zip
Size: ~451MB
MD5: 0a27b1a8227d934129cf0d2db2c430a4

Astaro Smart Installer V1
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/hardware_appliance/smart_installer/v1/ssi-8.102-2.1-ASI.zip
Size: ~459MB
MD5: ad043851da4cd7fd2bbb990b7f318049

ASG Software Appliances
General CD
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/software_appliance/iso/asg-8.102-2.1.iso
Size: 458MB
MD5: d172544961b4e0f9591e81324b550a67

Astaro Smart Installer V2
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/software_appliance/smart_installer/v2/asg-8.102-2.1-ASI-V2.zip
Size: 441MB
MD5: a1dbf74566563263754ca7d1a1154540

Astaro Smart Installer V1
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/software_appliance/smart_installer/v1/asg-8.102-2.1-ASI.zip
Size: 440MB
MD5: 72f9c40023f48969744da9ab3e6bb949

VMware Appliances
VMware ESX4
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/virtual_appliance/asg-8.102-esx-v4.zip
Size: ~1.1GB
MD5: 4de250f19e55164fc05fa7959bdd962f

VMware ESX3
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/virtual_appliance/asg-8.102-esx-v3.zip
Size: ~1.1GB
MD5: 5c3806606651fb7ba496922d5c442fb9

VMware Player
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/virtual_appliance/asg-8.102-vmware.zip
Size: ~1.1GB
MD5: 9adf8ff07a85af28779e0093ab2c10fd

If you have any questions on using these images you can make a post in our forums at www.astaro.org or open a support ticket with your Astaro Partner or support contact.

Network configurations and the threat landscape have become increasingly complex, making it necessary for organizations to consolidate their IT security. As we announced in our latest press release, 2011 will see Astaro Application Control, Astaro Log Management and Astaro Endpoint Security supporting our goal to take consolidation of IT security to a higher level.

Here you can find out more >

Interest at the Astaro booth (#2251) has so far been overwhelming and we hope that it continues to be so. We have set up a live stream, so you can see how much is going on for yourself.

Please note: The stream will only be on air during show times.

Video chat rooms at Ustream

Details
Remarks:
* Your system will not be rebooted
* Configuration will not be upgraded

News:
* No news for this release

Fixes:
      [16590] Exceptions without a configured source network that are in 'AND' mode are ignored by http proxy

Download Information:
   Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/Astaro_Security_Gateway/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.102.tgz.gpg
   Size: ~2.6MB
   Md5: d42dcde436ea73776cce1e39b31bcd42

The ASG V8.000 release notes can be found here, 8.100+ release notes (here) are/will be located on the Astaro Support KB.
Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro ASG Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.102] Configuring Astaro AP30 Wireless Product").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There are also demo servers for public use anytime at http://demo.astaro.com

Enjoy,

Angelo Comazzetto
ASG Product Manager

Read more from India's Digital Edge article here.

Members of MAPP receive security vulnerability information from the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) in advance of Microsoft’s monthly security update. By sharing vulnerability information prior to the public release of a security update, Microsoft enables security software providers who operate at the application and network layer to offer protection to our mutual customers in a timely manner. 

This means, Astaro as a MAPP partner receives vulnerability information earlier. We can provide updated patterns for our Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) at the same moment as Microsoft releases their patches. Before the launch of MAPP, security software providers had to wait until the public release of a security update before building protections. 

December

November

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July

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March

February

January

First of all we need to be aware why we do backups: a backup aims at copying the entire storage device to protect your company from data losses if the medium gets destroyed or lost. In that case you are prepared to simply restore the original data.

However, an archive is more than just a “bunch of data”. All files within an archive are tagged and retrievable. You don’t need to recover a complete tape for example in order to access one specific document.

This is also the reason why backups don’t meet legal requirements for archiving. Apart from national differences in details they all have one principle in common: it must be possible to retrieve a certain document (or proof that it does not exist) within an acceptable timeframe. In contrast to a backup system a compliant archive adds control features and impedes the deletion or modification of files or at least tracks changes.

By the way, best practice shows that you also simplify daily work routines when granting access to the archive for colleagues. Then, they can benefit from quick search functionality and retrieve old (or even newer) e-mails within less time than before.
 

This means customers taking delivery of new ASG orders will soon see them arriving with our latest and most feature-packed version already installed. Remember that 8.100 also includes support for our popular Wireless Security. The final release step will be 7.510 sometime in February which will allow existing Wireless Security and Full-Guard licenses running V7 to make use of the one-click upgrade-to-V8 feature.

As Version 8 proceeds further into the product life-cycle, we'd like to inform you at this time that V7 should be considered end-of-sale now. Further, we will officially end product support for V7 at the end of the year in 2012. Note that our ASG demo servers at http://demo.astaro.com are seeing increased usage, and we have plans to bring more online so they remain snappy and responsive. Note these now run ASG Version 8 exclusively.

In 2009, we started our expansion and investment strategy, broadening our portfolio to deliver a complete suite of IT security solutions. In order to continue this strategy and to lift the consolidation of IT security and UTM to the next level, we made two acquisitions of cutting edge technology companies in 2010. In both cases, we took over and will carry on all business.

The first is Romania-based CoSoSys, which offers mobile data protection solutions for both PC and Mac. Although there are lots of different solutions on the market to secure endpoints, their complicated, decentralized management leads to only fragmentary protection. In 2011, we will release Astaro Endpoint Security as an integrated part of the Astaro Security Gateway, allowing central security management, no matter where the endpoint is located. With the integration of the complete CoSoSys staff into our team, Astaro gains an experienced development team that will take care of the further development of Astaro Endpoint Security.

Our second acquisition is the Denmark-based company InspektOnline, which drastically simplifies log management with its hosted service. Not only is log management important when trying to achieve compliance with different standards like PCI-DSS, but also for security monitoring and troubleshooting. Astaro Log Management will offer automated archiving, consolidating and reporting, providing administrators with a better overview of what is going on in their network.

During the economic crisis, many technology companies decided to hold back investments. Already in 2009, we decided to take the opposite approach and started the development of three completely new products that were released in 2010: Astaro RED, Astaro Wireless Security and Astaro Mail Archiving. We gained significant market share and grew faster than the market, and this allowed us to further invest in the expansion of our product portfolio in 2010. This year, we will launch amongst others:

• Astaro Application Control / Next Generation Firewall: Helps to gain visibility of your Internet usage, blocks unwanted apps like Facebook or Ultrasurf while prioritizing internet bandwidth for business use.
• Astaro Endpoint Security: Manages endpoints at any location by using a centrally deployed security agent to prevent data loss from removable devices.
• Astaro Log Management: Centrally stores and analyzes log data from all your systems and applications to easily track errors, meet policies, and speeds up troubleshooting.

From our partners and customers, we learned that that it is time to consolidate security products on a higher level. In 2011, we will continue our investments in further functionality of our UTM core products and new technology areas like endpoint protection and log management. This is going to be an exciting year and I am really looking forward to it.

Next week during the beginning of February we will issue new ISO images for hardware and software appliances, along with new vSphere4 virtual machine images for the latest VMware virtualization support.

Details
Remarks:
* Your system will be rebooted

News:
* Updated: WebAdmin localizations for Chinese, French, Korean

Fixes:
    [16184] FTP doesn't work via HTTP Proxy
    [16203] WebAdmin login broken in case of remote authentication
    [16229] ACC Device Agent dies when RED Split DNS is configured
    [16500] Content Filter request does not honour parent proxy settings
    [16515] Only HTTP keytab entries are created by default, host entries are missing
    [16519] Incoming RED reply packets are dropped

Download Information:
   Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/Astaro_Security_Gateway/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.101.tgz.gpg
   Size: 67Mb
   Md5: 310bbf0671a7b10a80358f8c84deff72

The ASG V8.000 release notes can be found here, 8.100+ release notes (here) are/will be located on the Astaro Support KB.
Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro ASG Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.101] Using WAN Link Balancing with 3G/UMTS Modems").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There are also demo servers for public use anytime at http://demo.astaro.com

Enjoy,

Angelo Comazzetto
ASG Product Manager

A summary of new features and functionality for ASG 8.100 follows, for a more in-depth list, please see the official 8.100 release notes (now hosted in our KnowledgeBase for easier reference in the future).

ASG 8.100 Feature Summary:
Wireless
The Astaro Access Points (Astaro Access Points) are now supported for use with ASG V8. There are no major differences in functionality between V7 and V8 in this area.

RED Transparent/Split Modes
RED Appliances now support a third operating mode: "Transparent / Split". In this mode, the ASG is not responsible as the gateway for the remote network behind the RED device (eg. it does not provide a DHCP server and is not the default gateway). Instead, all traffic per default goes transparently through RED through the existing Internet connection at the branch; only traffic for the destined for the networks at the main office behind the ASG (remote networks) will be redirected to the ASG. At RED Managment >> Deployment helper you can find a setup form for RED devices which gives a bit more context and help instead of the standard Add RED form, in a wizard-style approach.

Usability Improvements:

• Improved Object Tables: Certain actions (delete, enable, and disable) can now be applied to multiple selected objects. Also, object tables can now be sorted by different attributes of objects.
• Dashboard Links: Various parts of the Dashboard now allow you to directly jump to the relevant page in WebAdmin via the green arrows in the head lines. Also all the topics in "Current system configuration" are now linked to the respective page.
• SMTP Profiles Redesign: SMTP profile configuration has been redesigned to be more in line with the rest of WebAdmin.
• Streamlined Interface Setup: When creating or editing an interface object, per default not all the options are shown anymore. Some of the more advanced settings or rarely-used options are hidden by default.
• Uplink Balancing Mixed Mode: In uplink balancing you don't have to choose anymore between either full multipath or failover. You can now define a default set of multipath interfaces and still define one or more fail over interfaces which will be activated if all the default interfaces fail. This can be useful if you have one line that is much slower or expensive than the others and should only be used as a very last resort, and gives more combinations as to how multiple connections can be used by the admin based on their specific needs.
• HTTP Parent Proxy Routing: You can now define more than one parent proxy for the HTTP proxy at Web Security>>HTTP/S Profiles>>Parent Proxies. Each parent proxy can be limited to a list of hosts. At Web Security>>HTTP/S>>Advanced you can define the list of enabled parent proxies and the order in which they should be matched. This feature is useful if various destinations require different upstream proxy points, such as in Schools or Government environments.

 Astaro 8.100 Information:
Customers which have a license that enables Wireless Security, (or a Full Guard Bundle) are not able to one-touch upgrade their appliances to Version 8 just yet. However, in the coming weeks we will release Version 7.510 which will advance the "landing" version of the upgrade process from 8.003 to 8.101. At this time, all elligible ASG appliances will be able to update using the one-touch process. We will have more information on this for you very soon.

Remarks:
Configuration will not be upgraded
System will be rebooted

News:
Added Wireless support
RED Transparent/Split Modes
RED Deployment helper
German and Japanese language support
Usability Improvements
Uplink Balancing Mixed Mode
HTTP Parent Proxy Routing
Licensing change: DNS Routing available with any subscription
Open sources update to SLES11SP1 + latest vulnerability patches

Fixes:
[15938] Issue when using RED with QoS

Download Links:
Below is the link for the Up2Date package from 8.003 to 8.100. Next week, we will update this posting with individual ISO images for Hardware and Software applainces, along with corresponding ISO downloads for use with the Astaro Smart Installer. We will also include new VMware vSphere4 virtual appliance images.

Up2Date Package:
ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.100.tgz.gpg
ISO size: 156M
ISO md5sum: 34df23040999104fd32205ac5dbf4880

Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro ASG Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.100] Wireless Security Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Angelo Comazzetto
ASG Product Manager

1. Mail server offloading – especially relevant for IT administrators, but also for users suffering from mailbox quotas
2. Instant discovery – the ability to discover e-mails and attachments within seconds
3. Compliance – archiving e-mails is a legal requirement in many countries

In my experience, searching for old e-mails can be a hard task. I am always afraid to delete any e-mail as I might need it in the future and thus have collected many over the years. Until recently, digging through my folder structure could cost me my valuable time. Even through using a localized search engine, locating what I wanted to find took a while and used up a fair bit of system resources – my time was better spent getting a cup of coffee in the meantime. My e-mail had inadvertently slipped into a different folder whilst sorting, and locating the mail took up the best part of an hour.

And this is only the user side – not even taking the efforts and daily mail-related workload of IT administrators into account. They certainly don’t wait for me to ask for a recovery…

It always rings hollow when promoting one’s own products. But I’m just proud and happy that with Astaro Mail Archiving I can now retrieve a – say 4 year old – email within seconds. Even though having an excuse for an extended coffee break is not always a bad thing…

I recommend further reading and administrators can see how they also simplify their daily routines with an e-mail archiving solution: http://www.astaro.com/products/astaro-mail-archiving
 

You may access the repository here: www.astaro.com/resources/product-information-pdfs. Please use the language selector at the top of the page to jump language as the PDF files are available in English (A4 and letter), German, French and Italian.

View all Datasheets

Nick’s focus is on helping organizations communicate effectively with law enforcement when they suffer a breach or have other reasons to turn to law enforcement. Making the leap from traditional police work to investigating and prosecuting computer crime isn’t easy, and both sides of the conversation could often use some help- that is what Nick is trying to facilitate.

Adrien’s objective is more broad, he is trying to drive creation of a Canadian response team or teams to help organizations deal with a variety of computer incidents, and to foster information sharing.

At some level, both of these goals boil down to “who do you call when things get ugly?” which in turn really boils down to “who do you trust?” The time to ask (and more importantly, answer) these questions is not during a crisis. If you are in a large enterprise, internal security and incident response teams should already have contacts in the corporate legal office as well as in regional and national law enforcement. In smaller organizations, you may not have anyone who knows who to turn to if (when) something bad happens.

Where can you turn to start building your web of trust so you know who to call in a crisis? Every organization and situation may be different, but here are some suggestions.

1) Start with your existing personnel, ask who has resources and recommendations, and share the information. If your organization uses an external incident response company, ask them for advice.

2) Think about the groups and organizations you belong to (or should). Local ISSA, NAISG, InfraGard or other groups are great places to start this discussion. The groups may be Information Security related, or may be specific to your industry. You may also meet people at conferences or other industry events who can help you. Just make sure you solidify contacts before a problem happens, sending an email to a mail list trying to find “that guy I met in Las Vegas- we talked about data breaches” is not the best way to react to a crisis. Keep in mind that your organization’s management and legal counsel should be consulted before you take any action or set policies.

Don’t wait until you have a crisis to think about who you can turn to. And make sure others in your organization have the information, too- because emergencies may happen when you are not available.

Note: if you are interested in either of the projects mentioned above and you would like an introduction to either Nick Selby or Adrien de Beaupre, please send a message to me at jdaniel at astaro.com and I will be happy to connect you.

26 percent of all companies questioned delete EVERY e-mail and do not ensure they retain it neither for the legally defined period nor for the simple benefit of keeping knowledge and information. Another 31 percent do not have an e-mail policy in place or do not actively enforce it. Thus, nobody can be sure whether important e-mails are archived or not. I can only hope that these results may have performed better had the survey been run in Europe. But realistically, I do not assume this would be true.

However, it would be very easy to achieve compliance with federal laws concerning e-discovery and retention. A sophisticated yet easy to use archiving system like the hosted Astaro Mail Archiving service would solve all issues. The good thing is that it simultaneously ensures that no e-mails will get lost: even if an employee’s computer hard drive crashes - and thus locally stored PST files get deleted as a result.
Learn more

Currently V8.100 is in soft-release, we plan to issue the GA Up2Date push on approximately January 11th. Following that, we'll soft-release the 7.510 Up2Date during the week of January 20th. This will then provide all qualifying ASG appliances with a one-touch upgrade to V8.100.

UpDate 7.509 Details
This Up2Date should be applied as soon as possible. Note that in most cases you do not need to manually download this, as the Up2Date will be pushed over our distribution system. The ASG Soft-Release process is not used for Up2Dates which are for security patching, for obvious reasons.

Remarks:

• Configuration will not be upgraded
• System will be rebooted

News:

• Address exim vulnerability
• Address clam vulnerability

Fixes:

• [ID15938] - Issue when using RED with QoS

Download Information
Manual Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/Astaro_Security_Gateway/v7/up2date/u2d-sys-7.509.tgz.gpg
Size: 42.14 MB (44,182,585 Bytes)
MD5: d9c59e861b3363f0c2f1b165e57dc55d

Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro ASG Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.100] Astaro Wireless AP30 Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Regards,
Angelo Comazzetto
Astaro Product Manager

Layered Defense

Firewalls and IPS systems still have their place and can help guard against simple exploits and Denial of Service attacks. To properly protect valuable web application servers though, an actual Web Application Firewall should also be used. A WAF works by examining the application layer to protect against common web server attacks such as cross site scripting and SQL injection attacks. These types of attacks are not caught by standard firewalls and IPS solutions, and most WAF's also function as a reverse proxy. This has the added benefit of making sure traffic from the Internet is not just 'passed' through to your servers, but is instead stopped at the WAF where a new connection is made on its behalf. This has the additional benefit of allowing for other advanced features such as malware scanning, and SSL offloading. Note that if credit cards numbers are processed on your web server you probably fall under PCI regulations, and may be required to have either a Web Application Firewall, or a code review to ensure you're not susceptible to common exploits.

In addition to having a WAF you can also try to protect your web servers using a few other techniques such as:

Separation of resources
Install web application servers in a protected DMZ which has no access to the local LAN or internal users. This prevents opening up the entire organization to threats should a successful exploit occur.

Know your network and how it appears to others
Review what information is available to would be attackers. The less unintended information available, the better. Review public DNS records to ensure only valid corporate information is available and no personal employee information is listed. Attackers may use public information about an organization and its employees to help launch a socially engineered attack. Check web server responses to make sure information about Operating System, application used, etc. are not available. Review error pages to ensure no useful information is given out such as local machine name or directory structure.

Limit responses to probes/errors
Eliminate bad requests instead of just responding to them. This cuts down on the information provided, and helps to avoid filling up logs which could result in a resource issue or downed server.

Vigilance
Monitor logs and reports for signs of anomalies, attackers, etc... Are the same IP's constantly probing your system? Do you constantly see the IPS reporting ISS exploits? Knowing what others are doing is important so you can ensure your defenses are sufficient. It may also help you spot things you missed in your network review.

Active Review
User NMAP and other tools ensure only allowed ports are available. Understanding what ports are open on web servers, and what IPs are visible via the internet is important in understanding your environment. Ideally you want to deny all traffic and only allow specific ports/applications to and from your servers.

Honey-pots/Misdirection
Another tactic may be to use probing information to your advantage. Using decoy names and information in public records and for error messages are 2 examples. If you find someone trying to contact that fake name or attacks are launched based on that misleading info, it can confirm when someone is probing your defenses. Deploying a honey-pot is another method so that you can further analyze intrusion attempts. Be careful with this method though as it may invite more aggressive attacks when attackers find out they've been fooled.

The term hacker is difficult to describe as it has so many different meanings and connotations. It was first used at MIT (Massachusetts Institute Technology), which held the first courses in computer programming and computer science. A group of students started to call themselves hackers because they were able to create code that made computer programs perform actions that were not originally intended. In the beginning, hackers were driven by something like a spirit of adventure. There was this new technology, this World Wide Web evolving quickly, and people wanted to discover what was possible. They wanted to test their own limits, create chaos or simply destroy property. The reason to do something was “because I can”. The first malwares crashed PCs, deleted hard disks and let Pacman appear on the screen. Their victims helplessly watched as the hackers demonstrated their abilities by inflicting damage while staying incognito, at least outside the hacker scene. This was the era of script-kiddies using simple malware coded by others in their bedroom.
But soon, the motivation for hackers started to change. What began as a recreational activity was then and still is driven by commercial goals as hackers realized that they could actually make money with their abilities and knowledge. A real market had developed, offering several ways of making money. Depending on which way they chose, hackers can be classified in several categories. The best known classification refers to classical western movies: the white and black hat.

A white hat hacker uses his know-how for non-malicious purposes, for example by working as a penetration tester within a contractual agreement or by searching for vulnerabilities in operating systems or applications and selling them to the vendor. On the other hand, black hat hackers break computer security or use technology like a computer or a mobile phone for credit card fraud, identity theft, piracy, or other types of illegal activities that earn them money.  Or they offer their method for renting or leasing, e.g. if they “own” a strong botnet and have others pay for spam floods or targeted denial of service attacks, which is also often preceded by blackmailing.

The most important difference between the money earning hacker of today and the script kiddie in the past is that the former does not want to be noticed. Back then, hackers wanted fame (for their hacker alias). They felt their capabilities should be recognized or even feared. Today, hackers attempt to stay invisible and want their hacks to remain unnoticed as well. Often weeks or even months go by until their victims realize something is wrong. Modern malware is installed unnoticed and works in the background of a system. The reason is: The longer it takes to detect an infection, the more money can be earned.

We are now at the edge of a third evolutionary step. In summer 2010, the term cyberwar became popular in the media, and the discussion was fueled by the discovery of Stuxnet, the first known worm that spies on and reprograms industrial systems. The actions of hackers now have a new motivation besides the longing for fame or money: Political motivation. There are hackers that follow their own political interests and views, like the hacker Jester, who claims to be responsible for the DDoS attacks on wikileaks that brought down their internet connection – Jester stated that wikileaks endangered “the lives of our troops, ‘other assets’ and foreign relations”.

Other hackers sell their abilities and resources like botnets to political players, whether they are political organizations or even governments. Some nations are suspected to have set up dedicated departments for cyber espionage or sabotage, while other nations are known to have set up dedicated departments to defend themselves against this new threat, e.g. the Pentagon’s Cyber Command (Cybercom) that is responsible for safeguarding the American military network. It is easy to imagine that those departments hire hackers– hackers, who see themselves as kind of cyber mercenaries, working for the political party that pays the most, or who dedicate their skills to a cause in which they believe, and operate in stealth. It is rumored that Stuxnet was a first shot in the dark by an unknown party, aiming at sabotaging not only production plants, but even nuclear power plants.

But still, there are also the good guys:  The security industry, engaged software vendors, white hats and non-profit organizations like CERT, SANS or MITRE and more. There are and always will be hackers that deliberately put on the black hat, for fun, money or politics, but there are and always will be those wearing the white hat. As the bad guys develop, so do the good guys. This is a cat-and-mouse game, with no model or theory telling us that there will be a final winner instead of an ongoing race.
 

Within the Astaro Security Gateway (the Astaro flagship product) come efficient but granular policies that restrict or allow access to network resources. This starts with packet filtering rules and IPS, continues with security and productivity settings for e-mail (think about spam!) and ends with elaborated settings for web security. This also includes remote offices connected via RED as well as mobile clients connected via WLAN.

For example, let’s choose "wikileaks" (http://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks), a web site which has existed since 2006, but which has just recently gained massive attention.

There are people who think wikileaks is a criminal, or even a terrorist organization. Others praise it for releasing classified documents of governments, institutions and associations that try to keep them secret and non-public for various reasons, therefore increasing transparency.

The ASG gives you the option to make your own choice. For example, if wikileaks is classified into a blocked category within your profile, you are able to disagree by doing one of the following:

• Clicking in Version 8 on Unblock URL (will be logged) and authorize yourself to get access
• Adding  "wikileaks.*" to Web Security >> HTTP/S >> URL Filtering >> Always allow these URLs/sites
• Creating a new exception list under Web Security >> HTTP/S >> Exceptions, adding "wikileaks.*" and marking URL Filter as check that shall be skipped
• Adding "wikileaks.*" to Web Security >> HTTP/S Profiles >> Filter Actions >> Always allow these URLs/sites, if you manage different profiles

For every rule, there is at least one exception. It is up to you to make the choice!
 

Most businesses these days recognize the value in using web proxies to protect their users and to scan and control web content. These tools and procedures protect users from malware, SPAM, and other types of threats, and protect business owners from financial loss which could result in liability issues relating to stolen data or inappropriate content. Business owners understand that investing in web security tools is necessary to protect both their users and their businesses from the many threats on the web today.

As an integral part of the business Web servers deserve at least the same level of protection due to the sensitive information they often hold such as credit card numbers and customer data. Protecting valuable resources like web servers is often done through a combination of location (a secure DMZ), firewall rules and IPS scanning. These tools help guard against some attacks, but may not be sufficient protection against sophisticated attacks such as SQL injections, cross site scripting, and may not protect a site from malware and viruses.

These types of attacks are increasingly seen in the news, and it’s not only small companies with overworked technical staff that are affected. High profile attacks on companies such as AT&T, and Heartland payment systems show that all types and sizes of businesses are vulnerable, and the results can range from bad publicity (which can scare away potential customers) to loss of market share and lawsuits. Nothing spoils the holiday season like finding out that your credit card number was used to buy someone else’s nice gifts. While there is never a good time to suffer a web server breach, the holiday shopping season is a particularly bad time as this is when most consumer shopping is done.  You don’t want people to be wary about shopping on your website because of a past breach.

Properly defending a web or application server is best done by using an actual Web Application Firewall which can act as an inbound proxy, and which prevents clients from directly connecting to your web servers. This separation not only provides protection, but can also provide application load balancing and SSL offloading.  Common security tools such as malware scanning can be augmented with advanced protections such as URL hardening and cookie signing, and these tools can help protect even an improperly configured web server against attacks.

Online commerce is serious business and so it requires serious protection. Until recently these tools were available only to larger organizations which had the technical knowhow and financial resources to implement them correctly. New offerings from many UTM providers (such as Astaro) are making these invaluable tools available to businesses of all sizes.

So as the holiday shopping season begins don’t let your web server fall victim to an attack or you may find your online revenue shrinking when it should be growing.
 

More information about this can be found here: http://www.scmagazineus.com/astaro-security-gateway-v8/review/3348/

After spending eight hours of listening to the various projects, I am absolutely thrilled with the results and the ideas the students came up with. I honestly don’t know how they managed to squeeze everything into one final paper. But it showed me once again that it is definitely worth for us to support this CAST competition project because in the end we will be awarded with exceptionally interesting results by very talented IT people.

Next year we will need to put a strong focus on getting more students to participate in this award competition. We have so many young hidden IT security talents at our universities; it would be a shame if we could not get their researches and ideas to be as appreciated as they ought to be. For Astaro as an IT security provider it is our duty to support and help the CAST organisation actively with this – now and in future.

IT security will become more and more important. Hence, the potential of this event offers huge possibilities for upcoming technology developments and security approaches. So am I happy with the event on Thursday? Yes, I most certainly am!
 

As Astaro Report Manager is not supported with Version 8, ARM will be end-of-sale at the end of 2010. In researching how ARM is deployed and which features are used, we are hard at work in offering its functionality both within the ASG itself and in the Astaro Command Center. Beginning with ASG 8.20 (which will be released in the first half of 2011) we will re-design the Web Security reporting of ASG with many next-generation features. Customers can look forward to building their own customized reports, saving them for future reference, and subscribing users to them via email distribution lists. The reporting itself will also undergo significant changes, offering a new navigation with reactive filtering which can be used to view data in many new ways by clicking through reports using data paths which change dynamically as you navigate. Enhanced reporting per-user, reporting by department and category, and other reports like search engine activity are all in development.

For aggregated reports, the Astaro Command Center (ACC) offered Network, Web, and Mail Security reporting across multiple connected sites beginning in ACC 2.1, and more enhancements were introduced in ACC 2.2 during the summer. Our developers are hard at work to deliver even more centralized reporting options for future versions; more announcements will follow on what is to come in ACC 3.0.

As mentioned, support will continue for ARM with V7 installations throughout 2011 until the end of the year, at which point ARM will be end-of-support. We are excited to unveil all the new reporting features we are working on soon, stay tuned!

The middleware will crash and restart in a cycle. If you have already moved to V8 and are experiencing this bug, Astaro support can help you by disabling the DHCP assignment and/or using the pool instead for L2TP.

We have already fixed this bug in the 8.100 Beta, and will shortly publish a fix in 8.004, which will also be the new landing version for the appliance upgrade process.
Apologies if you are of one the very few customers affected by this bug. (based on your configuration.) If you have specific questions, please contact our support.
 

Appliance Upgrade Process Overview:
This V7 to V8 appliance upgrade will retain all configuration and settings, including the current contents of the spam quarantine. Note that log files will be cleared and reports will begin anew, so customers should be sure to first download and archive their old logs using the various methods provided in WebAdmin. This will be one of the final content updates for ASG V7 with only maintenance patches planned for the future.

Important things to note about the appliance upgrade process:

• After the upgrade process is complete, the ASG will be at version 8.003. The target landing version will change over time to land upgraders at newer versions (like 8.100) once they are released.
• The one-touch upgrade process is only available to ASG appliance users. Software installations have various hardware configurations and the viability of an upgrade without the hardware detection process of the installer cannot be guaranteed. Software installations however can still easily move to version 8 by installing the ISO image and restoring a V7 backup file from version 7.507 or greater.
• Customers with Wireless Security on their license will not be able to perform a one-touch upgrade for now, since Wireless functionality is not yet in the stable release version 8.003. If you attempt to perform an upgrade where Wireless is licensed, an error message will be displayed and the upgrade will not continue. When 8.100 is GA released near the end of November, the landing target will be updated afterwards and this condition will be removed at that time. Note that Wireless Security is present within Full Guard license bundles as well, regardless of whether it is being used.
• To ensure quality and stability, customers using High Availability or Clustering configurations will not be able to one-touch upgrade their appliances. These installations can de-configure their nodes and then upgrade them each in turn or install Version 8 via the ISO image.
• Old revisions of the ASG 110/120/220 with 512 megabytes of memory do not meet the minimum hardware requirements (1 Gigabyte) for ASG Version 8, and are not able to one-touch upgrade as a result.
   

UpDate 7.508 Details
Remarks:

• Configuration will be upgraded
• System will be rebooted
• Connected REDs will perform firmware upgrade (do not reboot them during this process)
• Connected APs will perform firmware upgrade (do not reboot them during this process)

News:

• Added Wireless Security support (GA)
• Added option to one-touch upgrade to V8 for hardware appliances
• Introduced outbound spam scanning support
• Improved IPS engine

Fixes:

• [ID11371] - eDirectory authentication may stop working when no BaseDN is specified
• [ID11932] - WAN connectivity hangs when changing the "daily reconnect" time on a PPPoE interface
• [ID12449] - ASG conflicts when using special character ")" in PPPoE password
• [ID12539] - Pushed dns servers are randomly not used
• [ID13085] - HTTP Proxy restarts in a loop
• [ID13126] - Link status of LAG interfaces terminology changes
• [ID14089] - Antispam daemon restarts frequently during certain scenarios
• [ID14654] - Blank Executive Report
• [ID14404] - UDP flood protection blocks RED traffic

Download Information
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/Astaro_Security_Gateway/v7/up2date/u2d-sys-7.508.tgz.gpg
Size: 175 MB (183,690,474 Bytes)
MD5: 9fdff2f4bf185b1b71d4c17f6594606f

Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro ASG Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.003] Web Application Security Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Regards,
Angelo Comazzetto
Astaro Product Manager

8.003 provides some fixes for those who will upgrade to ASG V8 from V7, and another set of fixes to address some security advisories in bzip2 and ClamAV.
*Note: Users of a previous, pre-GA "soft-release" of this 8.003 should re-apply this Up2Date to resolve issues with Anti-Spam daemon restarts and importing V7 backups into V8 installations which have HA configured. (See the forums if you need help with this)

Details
Remarks:
* Your system will be rebooted

News:
* Fixed: bzip2 vulnerability (CVE-2010-0405)

Fixes:
ID15395: UTF-8 Characters in IPSec PSK kill MiddleWare
ID14710: installation of customer license failed without a error
ID15480: Astaro: DiskCache::set() dies if key contains wide characters
ID15243: Update ClamAV

Download Information
MD5Sum: 0087e2c97e42c17f36b62987ad682ca8
Size: 24,270,749 Bytes (24MB)
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/Astaro_Security_Gateway/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.003.tgz.gpg

The ASG V8.000 release notes can be found here.

Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro ASG Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please indicate the version you are using (e.g. "[8.003] Web Application Security Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

Regards,
Angelo Comazzetto
Astaro Product Manager

Although the remaining 2010 dates are now all fully booked, new dates have been added for the early 2011 schedule for Germany and Austria.

View the updated schedule here and secure your place in a classroom training session.

View Training Schedule >

Besides compliance issues, the whitepaper also highlights productivity advantages through archiving:

• Offloading your mail server makes maintenance routines easier and quicker
• Backups are simplified as all mail data is stored centrally – and not locally in pst-files
• Retrieving emails within seconds is a huge day-to-day benefit for all e-mail users
• Much knowledge is only stored in emails – so prevent it from getting lost
• In case an employee leaves the company: knowledge transfer (in form of old email transactions) is easily possible

You can download your copy of the whitepapers here:

• English version
• German version

Regards,
Kathrin Möschle
Product Marketing Manager Astaro Mail Archiving

Together with our distributor Contec, we were showcasing our solutions at this year’s Infosecurity.nl, which took place from 3rd to 4th November. We are very happy as we could welcome so many visitors at our booth and as we had lots of interesting stuff to show and discuss with them.

We had a nice little idea to create attention among the Dutch reseller community, sending them empty Astaro Security Gateway boxes in the days before the event, which only contained a note inviting them to come by and get to know what should be in the box. Seems mankind is curious by nature. :)

Also, we had the pleasure to meet some press representatives.

Check out CRN’s website to read on

Daniel is an active participant in the organization, planning and promoting the BSides events throughout the United States and Canada. This is the first Security BSides event to take place in Canada and will feature prominent Canadian security experts.

For more information about the event, please see the official press release.

Beside the scientific aspirations of the conference was a very interesting talk from Felix 'FX' Lindner about the hackers view on the academic science business. To mention some other very interesting talks, I would pick the analysis of the Chuck Norris Botnet from Pavel Celeda and the “HTTPreject”-project about handling overload situations from Joerg Schneider and Sebastian Koch. Thx to Konrad Rieck for organizing it, I look forward for the seventh EC2ND.

Sebastian Klipper's keynote comprised of a convincing plea for more competency not in but for the OSI layer 8.  In plain text, users are not the cause of IT security issues, but simply the general inability to understand and communicate IT security as a problem solving tool.

The second keynote provided by Tom Brennan presented the history and facts of the OWASP community. He also covered the current state of web application security.

The next session was offered in two parallel tracks. The first track was dedicated to the OWASP project itself, such as Dirk Wetter's speech on the development of the OWASP Top 10 as a tool for risk management. The second track was dedicated to hands-on web application security topics. Sascha Herzog demonstrated in his session how easy it is to use XML external entity attacks (XEE) to exploit a server-side XML parser, to deliver confidential data via file inclusion or to perform server-side port scans.

Side channel attacks are usually known only in cryptography context. Sebastian Schinzel showed us how to use side channel attacks to reveal private information on a web application by pure passive observation of the network traffic. This should be considered as a alternative attack vector in the case that the usual penetration tests fail to expose any other vulnerabilities.

Andreas Schmidt presented the Web Application Toolbox: WATABO. This application tries to bridge the gap between the easy to script commercial and the more transparent and traceable free penetration test tools.

Alexander Meisel's Session on the development of large distributed applications in the context of service oriented architectures made the conference perfect in my opinion. These applications cause an increased demand on distributed web application firewalls (dWAF) that are capable to defend against novel threats “out of the cloud”.

Overall the OWASP AppSec Germany 2010 Conference offered plenty opportunities to catch up on new trends of web application security and to socialize with the OWASP community. As a venue for the web application security industry, this year's conference was a raving success. The next OWASP AppSec Germany is expected to take place next year once again in Nuremberg.
 

Spam levels averaged 88% of all email traffic throughout the third quarter, peaking at over 95% in mid-September with 198 billion spam/phishing messages per day. Q2 spam levels averaged only 80% of all email, with 179 billion spam/phishing messages per day.

Approximately 339,000 zombies were activated daily, almost 30,000 more per day than in the previous quarter.

The most popular spam topic this quarter (59% of all spam) was pharmacy.

For the third quarter running, pornography/sexually explicit material is the website category most likely to be compromised with malware.

India keeps its title for the second quarter in a row as the country with the most zombies – 14%.

Streaming media/downloads continues to be the most popular topic for blog creators in the Web 2.0 sphere of user-generated content.

Download the Commtouch full report here (PDF).

From October 19th to 21st 2010, the it-sa opened its doors for the second time as dedicated IT security fair, and we at Astaro took part as an exhibitor. We were very impressed with what we saw and experienced! Our booth was buzzing with visitors, who all had immense interest in IT security with their own projects to discuss.

Congratulations to the fair for having established itself as THE German IT security fair in such a short space of time.

More information on the it-sa can be found here.

Loads of visitors checked by to learn more about Astaro RED and Astaro Wireless Security – we had a lot of exciting talks. We introduced our new solutions also to the press and received encouraging echo, read more here.

Astaro RED uses a revolutionary approach to offer protection for external branch office locations. Through a centrally located Astaro Security Gateway at the head office, complete unified threat management security can then be cascaded down remotely as if there were an Ethernet cable connecting the two devices.

The unconfigured Astaro RED device needs only be shipped to the location and plugged in. The local office will only need to communicate the serial number to the head office and plug in three connections: Internet cable, computer and the mains supply. Everything else will follow automatically, eliminating the need for local technical IT staff.

Management, logging, troubleshooting and reporting are all centralized through the Astaro Security Gateway, reducing the total cost of ownership by up to 80% - compared to any other method.

Find out how you can easily secure your branch office locations with Astaro RED.

Many thanks to everybody who took part – we are grateful and highly value your feedback regarding Astaro Security Gateway Version 8 and our new strategy and roadmap. Furthermore, congratulations to all those who won Astaro RED appliances and Access Points in our quiz!

In the future, you will hear  more about “Pragmatic IT Security by Astaro”,  our approach that offers a complete view on what is needed to be done to protect a company infrastructure, company data and employees and that fights the increasing complexity of IT and IT security. In this approach, we combine our 10 years of experience with your expertise as consultants and service providers.

Below you can find a few images from the closing event of the DACH tour in the Bavaria film studio in Munich.

This year, the winning slot in the category "High Potential" was awarded to Lumo Graphics for their outstanding work in the field of 3D visualization. Back in 2005, Astaro was the winner in the same category, which we considered a fine compliment and incentive for our progression over the years. We now feel it is important for us to engage with others, to bring forward their innovative ideas and to exchange them.

Founded in 1997 as a private-public partnership in Karlsruhe, the non-profit organization "CyberForum e.V." is, with over 800 members, the largest and most successful regional network for high-tech entrepreneurs in Germany. Under the motto "From the network for the network" experience, ideas and business knowledge are exchanged, discussed and implemented.

Astaro participated in all of the roadshow locations with a booth and a keynote speech during which, Gabriele Minniti, EMEA Presales Engineer at Astaro, introduced the Astaro RED and explained how this device can simplify VPN processes. This aroused great interest from many attendees.

Astaro is also due to participate at the ICT Days event in Soiel which will be held in southern Italy, in Bari, on the 16th and 17th November 2010.

Located in Italy, Soiel International regularly realizes congresses, seminars and workshops dedicated to security, targeting at end users, public administration representatives and system integrators.

Several of the top contributers and testers will receive prizes for their efforts! You can win your own access point, Astaro RED device, or even an ASG appliance for personal home use. For all the details of the 8.100 Beta program, and information on the release itself, read on!

General Beta Information
Why Participate?
To try the latest features and new things before they are generally available! By installing our Beta software, you get the chance to see upcoming features and test new functionality a bit earlier than the general customer-base. In return, we gain valuable insight into various areas of the release which might not otherwise be uncovered during normal QA lab testing or via our own private test installations. This lets us offer releases with the quality you have come to expect from Astaro, and also lets us hear your impressions of our latest offerings so that we can continue to build the best products which our customers want to buy.

How to be a Beta tester:
It's simple. Just download the latest Beta ISO image via our continually updated forums post, burn it to a CD and install it to your ASG software installation or appliance. Please be sure to download the appropriate ISO. Once you are using the 8.100 Beta, you can continue to use Up2Date and install the next Beta releases for 8.100 without needing to re-install again. Just restore your backup file and you are up and running! We also plan to release a final Up2Date package at the end of the 8.100 Beta which will take your installation to the GA release of 8.100 without having to re-install again.

How you can contribute:
During the period of the Beta for 8.100, which will run until approximately late November, we would encourage you to post your impressions, feedback, bug reports, and all the associated things you like (or don't like!) in our offical 8.100 Beta forums. We will closely monitor and reply to threads and comments in this forum for the duration of the Beta. At the end of the Beta, we will reward our most active contributors; there are great prizes and rewards to be had!

Astaro Beta 8.100 Download Information:
For the first release of the Beta, version 8.050 is being made available. Future updates and releases will be communicated soley through the forums, so check there often for updates and news around the 8.100 release! You will find many answers to early questions, test license downloads, and general Beta information can be found in the launch overview for 8.100 here.

Links:
ASG ISO for Software/Virtual appliance installation:
ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/beta/asg-8.050-36.1.iso
ISO size: 398M (416995328 bytes)
ISO md5sum: 37bb40b4a0673eeb18fab4496e4268d3
ISO sha1sum: ccbf74256a52e331ad21de6807a2f4c0f646b283

SSI ISO for Hardware appliance installation:
ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/beta/ssi-8.050-36.1.iso
ISO size: 408M (427395072 bytes)
ISO md5sum: 8ca84673484f17bd8555dbc036637baa
ISO sha1sum: f6f20f428ec66cab1d932b41362001d4883df9f4

Feature Details:
Wireless
The Astaro Access Points (Astaro Access Points) are now supported in V8. There are no major differences in functionality between V7 and V8 in this area.

RED Transparent/Split Modes
RED Appliances now support a third operating mode: "Transparent / Split". In this mode, the ASG is not responsible as the gateway for the remote network behind the RED device (eg. it does not provide a DHCP server and is not the default gateway). Instead, all traffic per default goes transparently through RED through the existing Internet connection at the branch; only traffic for the destined for the networks at the main office behind the ASG (remote networks) will be redirected to the ASG. At RED Managment >> Deployment helper you can find a setup form for RED devices which gives a bit more context and help instead of the standard Add RED form, in a wizard-style approach.

Various Usability Improvements:

• Improved Object Tables: Certain actions (delete, enable, and disable) can now be applied to multiple selected objects. Also, object tables can now be sorted by different attributes of objects.
• Dashboard Links: Various parts of the Dashboard now allow you to directly jump to the relevant page in WebAdmin via the green arrows in the head lines. Also all the topics in "Current system configuration" are now linked to the respective page.
• SMTP Profiles Redesign: SMTP profile configuration has been redesigned to be more in line with the rest of WebAdmin.
• Streamlined Interface Setup: When creating or editing an interface object, per default not all the options are shown anymore. Some of the more advanced settings or rarely-used options are hidden by default.
• Uplink Balancing Mixed Mode: In uplink balancing you don't have to choose anymore between either full multipath or failover. You can now define a default set of multipath interfaces and still define one or more fail over interfaces which will be activated if all the default interfaces fail. This can be useful if you have one line that is much slower or expensive than the others and should only be used as a very last resort.
• HTTP Parent Proxy Routing: You can now define more than one parent proxy for the HTTP proxy at Web Security>>HTTP/S Profiles>>Parent Proxies. Each parent proxy can be limited to a list of hosts. At Web Security>>HTTP/S>>Advanced you can define the list of enabled parent proxies and the order in which they should be matched. This feature is useful if various destinations require different upstream proxy points, such as in Schools or Government environments.

Enjoy the 8.100 Beta!

Angelo Comazzetto
Astaro Product Manager

Astaro and our innovations are turning heads in the Zabeel Hall (booth ZL-B2) as are three of our partners and distributors. To get an overall impression of our engagement at the event, please view the image slideshow below. We have already discussed many interesting new projects with new visitors and look forward to the remaining days to come.

The Athens Digital Week is one of the biggest technology events in Greece which sees thousands of visitors yearly. The event is not only devoted to digital technology, but also showcases important innovations from around the world. Astaro presented it's new wireless security solution and also provided complete unified threat management protection for all wireless clients throughout the exhibition hall via the placement of seven AP 30 devices.

View the event slideshow below which includes a short video showing a flying drone controlled by an iPhone via the Astaro access points.

CLICK TO VIEW SLIDESHOW >

Please visit our website for more information about Astaro Access Points and Wireless Security.

Astaro Security Gateway features full Network, Web, Mail and Web Application Security with VPN functionality and protects up to 50 IP addresses. Read the full article here.

Astaro Security Gateway can do many things for your home network such as:

• Increase your Internet Bandwidth - You can make easy use of multiple Internet connections at the same time, giving your home more bandwidth.
• Protect your Kids Web Surfing Habits - Use Web Filtering to stop sites from infecting you with viruses and spyware, keep your kids from surfing to bad sites, and get full reporting on the activity in your home.
• Solve your Spam Mail Problems - Use Mail Filtering to clean up your inbox and reduce the amount of spam you have to sift through using any POP3 or SMTP setup.
• Access your Home Network from Anywhere - Dial in using Roadwarrior VPN access to securely use Remote Desktop, transfer files, and even print, from anywhere in the world, even from your iPhone.
• Connect to Work or Friends - Create a permanent tunnel to other ASG devices, linking you with a friends network, or having the perfect encrypted link to your office Astaro to work from home!
• Stop Viruses in Web and Email - Dual Scanning Engines stop viruses in file downloads, email attachments, and embedded in web sites. Astaro catches them at the gateway, before they can get in to assault your computers.
• And a lot more...

Get your free home use version here!

This does not mean that big companies are preferable targets for such attacks. Small and medium sized companies are easier targets, because they lack the necessary budget and know-how in order to protect themselves against sophisticated malware.

While today every company protects itself against attacks via e-mail, their web servers remain mostly unprotected. This aspect makes this type of vulnerability very interesting for hackers. In principle, every company that operates a web server and uses forms on their website, such as a contact form, is vulnerable.

What does it mean to be a victim of such an attack? The consequences can be severe. You may lose confidential customer and business partner data or infect visitors of your site with malicious code - just imagine your website giving out a virus to visitors for weeks without detection. Thus, immense damage can be caused to a third party - and you would have been responsible. In these cases, Google could detect the hack before you do, and mark your website as potentially dangerous in the search results. As a consequence, your corporate image will be damaged and you may lose much trust in your customer relationships.

Companies cannot afford to take no action against the vulnerabilities present in their web server. However, there are only two possibilities for a solution:

1. You personally learn how such attacks work and how to protect web applications against malware. Then try to make your web server and applications more secure. However, this is very time consuming and expensive, and also requires ongoing training.
2. You invest in a web application firewall, and place it in front of your web server. This is the faster solution, and it also requires less effort in the future.

Web servers already are popular targets for hackers, and this will only increase further with time.

Gert Hansen,
Vice President Product Management, Astaro

The 8.002 release also adds a feature for having SMTP Footers which are configurable per-profile, allows for ASG to communicate with two Astaro Command Center installations simultaneously, and adds some new options and tweaks for Web Application Security (reverse proxy). The ACC feature is something many partners have asked for, since each ACC server can have different management permissions. In this way, partners can retain full management control of installations for their customers, while still letting the customer see and interact with their sites in a lesser way with reduced permissions (or vice-versa) using a second Astaro Command Center.

Lastly, for those anxiously awaiting the 8.100 Beta which will introduce V8-support for our newly released Wireless Access Points, this is currently planned to start near the end of October. Stay tuned for more information!

ASG Up2Date 8.002 Details

News:

• Feature: SMTP Mail footer now configurable per-profile
• Feature: Allow for two WAS SSL frontends with same (wildcard) SSL certificate to share a port
• Feature: Option to pass the HTTP Host header through WAS untouched
• Feature: Allow configuration of second ACC server (with different permissions)
• Added: Support for Agere Systems ET-131x PCI-E Ethernet Controller

Remarks:

• System will be rebooted
• Configuration will be updated

Fixes:

• [ID14416] ASG cannot join a Windows 2008 server domain when server is specified in WebAdmin
• [ID14564] Packetfilter rule using Single Time Event does not get created
• [ID14627] Local IP addresses counted for license check
• [ID14699] Interface MTU settings not set correctly on HA slave
• [ID14706] Packetfilter breaks if a rule used a big service group
• [ID14712] ip-win32 dynamic option in the SSL Client Conf doesn't work with Linux, BSD, MAC OSX.
• [ID14736] Email confidentiality footer gets injected in unsuitable email parts
• [ID15119]: Fix Acc-Agent includes for IPSecSite2Site.pm
• [ID15131]: Adapt ACC Single Sign-On to two ACC Servers

Download:
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/Astaro_Security_Gateway/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.002.tgz.gpg
Md5sum: 28f548cc270a392d063255e416cb7c42
Size: 106.764.278 bytes (Approx. 102 MB)

For the ASG 8.0 Release Notes click here.

Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro AxG Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please take care to add always(!) the version you refer to (e.g. "[8.001] Web Application Security Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

(All Up2Dates are GNUPG-signed!)

Regards,

Angelo Comazzetto
ASG Product Manager

Stuxnet uses four previously unknown exploits in Windows, not all of which have been patched by Microsoft to this day. To find even a single flaw in Windows requires immense know-how, time and effort, and hackers will happily invest their free time in these projects since such a Zeroday exploit is estimated at a quarter of a million Euros on the black market. The fact that the developers of Stuxnet detected four previously unknown exploits at once shows that we are not dealing with recreational hackers, but with people who have know-how and resources at hand – a dangerous combination.

The control systems in question that are targeted by Stuxnet are often not or insufficiently protected, as they have no connection to the Internet and work independently. Today however, we have to act on the assumption that any computer can be infected. Even if a computer has no direct access to the internet, as is often the case with control computers for production plants, it is still part of a network and connected to other systems. What is really clever with Stuxnet, is that the Trojan enters the corporate network at one point and then spreads further through its own initiative via the network using different methods. This process continues until it locates a computer that has installed the required software - in this case the WinCC.

A further problem is that manufacturers of industrial plants are on the same level in terms of security as Microsoft was ten years ago. Back then, Microsoft hardly paid attention to security. For industrial plants, their focus is on uninterrupted operation and security is secondary. An example: Even after learning about the Stuxnet infection, Siemens advised its customers not to change the default passwords in the system, as this could affect the ongoing operation of critical systems.

The security of a company is only as strong as its weakest link. Since divisions and sub networks are interconnected, it is not enough to look at parts of a company or to introduce different measures for different segments. For example, a minimum requirement is a company-wide password policy, which forbids the use of default passwords for the current operation.
 

The most important aspect with the deployment of wireless networks is to make sure that the chosen solution fits seamlessly into the infrastructure in place, especially with firewalls and other security systems in mind. Otherwise, a company would make itself extremely vulnerable, because wireless networks don’t stop at the company’s gates. The list of possible attack scenarios is long, ranging from unauthorized connections with neighboring access points, simple electronic eavesdropping on insufficiently encrypted wireless signals through to denial-of-service attacks. All wireless LAN solutions used in the business environment must be able to respond to these problems.

The other important issue is manageability. As companies usually need more than one access point to offer wide-ranging wireless networking capabilities, each Wi-Fi solution needs to be checked for whether a high number of individual devices can be quickly and simply configured. In the recent past, so-called wireless LAN controller solutions have proven to do this job best. When taking this approach, the access points are no longer configured in the devices themselves, but in a central instance known as the wireless LAN controller. The controller authenticates the access points and gives them a suitable configuration. This enables the wireless LANs to be conveniently configured by a central location and any configuration changes simultaneously affect all access points.

Having had all of these requirements in mind, we came up with Astaro Wireless Security, which is an extension to Astaro Security Gateway, combining the comprehensive security of a UTM appliance with the benefits of a wireless LAN. Technically speaking, Astaro Wireless Security is a combination of a built-in wireless LAN controller that is integrated in Astaro Security Gateway and a new product line of Astaro access points, AP 10 and AP 30, which both support the latest wireless standard 802.11n and are suited for different office environments.

Astaro Wireless Security, which requires a valid wireless security subscription and will be available for the upcoming ASG version 7.508, protects all wireless clients and all wireless zones with the same high level of UTM security that is in place for devices connected via a wired LAN. The entire wireless traffic is forwarded to the Astaro Security Gateway, where it can be filtered for inappropriate content or scanned for viruses or other malicious software. Complete configuration, logging and troubleshooting of all wireless zones are performed within the Astaro Security Gateway; it even offers a central view of all connected wireless clients. And, as a special goody, setting up wireless guest Internet access is quite easy: a special wizard allows you to automatically create a wireless guest network with only a few clicks, providing Internet access to guests or visitors of your company without the risk of compromising the integrity of your internal network.

The Astaro access point appliances are now available. For more information, please click here.
 

The community was invited to vote for their favorite picture in our gallery of submissions and the voting session closed on 22nd September 2010.

The Winning 5, who have each won a pair of RayBan sunglasses, can be seen below:

Click here to see the full gallery.

Thank you to all participants who shared their Orange Summer. We hope you enjoyed assembling your pair of original Astaro sunglasses and for producing some really innovative images for everyone to enjoy. Thanks also to all those who supported the participants by placing their votes. We are already looking forward to the Astaro Orange Summer 2011!

You may access the repository here: www.astaro.com/resources/product-information-pdfs. Please use the language selector at the top of the page to jump language as the PDF files are available in English, German, French and Italian.

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The past decade was highly evolutionary. Everything became smaller and was packed with more software driven features. Because software is used on all sorts of gadgets, software security became a very big topic and one that we continue to explore. And of course, any device worth using daily is worth networking - wirelessly. Specifically, most multi-use devices will connect to wireless LANs. Add all of that together and we have a lot of wireless LANs that are in need of proper security. It is no longer enough to simply make a password for your access point and use some kind of encryption.

Security infrastructure must now be aware of wireless infrastructure and the two should be working together to provide a secure and useful wireless experience for the user. Enterprises have been at the forefront of this for a while, but it usually requires many routers, switches and access points (at least!) communicating properly. This adds a lot of overhead and manpower to installing, configuring and maintaining the entire infrastructure. This, in and of itself, is not a problem. However, the more complex a network becomes, the higher the likelihood that there is a misconfiguration that can cause a security incident. This is why it is important to have one device aware of the entire network, rather than relying on separate systems that control many different functions.

Most systems will have either a standalone access point/router or will have a wireless infrastructure system that centrally manages multiple access points. You then have to use a separate device to do your routing and firewalling and perhaps even a third (or more) to do proxying. Our flagship Astaro Security Gateway is about to get another great feature. It will act as a central wireless control point. You would now be able to configure your wireless devices and integrate them directly into your security configuration seamlessly. If you add this on with our new RED system, you can even centrally manage many sites’ wireless and security infrastructure from one system. This will greatly reduce the overhead incurred by having to learn multiple systems, install and maintain them. In a word, it becomes easy.

In the end, history will tell us what this past decade’s milestones truly were. Perhaps we will look on the decade and remember getting our hands on our first touch screen device. Maybe it will be about mass marketing gadgets rather than full computing platforms. I know that I will be remembering how wireless technology began to take off. I will also remember being part of a team that helped make it easier on everybody.

Google data collection scandal reveals careless approach to security at WiFi access points 

The news that Google saves unencrypted content from WiFi networks as it collects data for its Street View mapping service is creating an uproar among the public. More and more data protection specialists are leveling harsh criticism at the company. Wrongly so, what is so alarming about the Google WiFi scandal is not the fact that data was collected. The central problem lies elsewhere. There are numerous unprotected WiFi networks in the United States and the Google issue has made people aware of how carelessly they treat their data on a day-to-day basis. The fact is Google did not ‘hack into’ any of these networks, nor did it access this data through illegal methods. The Street View cars simply collected data that was, metaphorically speaking, ‘floating around in the air’ already. In any case, the company did no more with this data than save it. Anyone with a reasonable grasp of technology can collect WiFi data these days!

Easier for private households
It is not difficult to protect wireless access points. In recent years, many manufacturers have marketed secure consumer solutions aimed specifically at private households, which can be configured at the touch of a button. However, it is not so simple for businesses. They have different requirements and enterprise wireless security solutions are generally still inflexible, expensive and complex. As a result, companies either forego WiFi altogether, despite its business benefits or they rely on cheaper consumer solutions. This can be dangerous, as these versions naturally provide a much lower level of security than enterprise solutions.

One size doesn't fit all
An enterprise solution should be able to do more than manage an access point centrally, for example. It should also be able to support strict authentication in relation to Active Directory, for instance. Secure, convenient guest access is also a standard feature of an enterprise solution. If a company opts for a consumer product, there is no guarantee that it can be securely integrated with the operating environment and the security policy. It is particularly important to ensure that a WiFi security solution fits seamlessly into the security infrastructure in place, including features such as the firewall, VPN, and content filter.

There are means of securing WiFi access points. The next few months will see major progress in the development of simple, affordable enterprise solutions. For instance, in the third quarter, we plan to release Astaro Wireless Security, a plug-and-play WiFi security solution that is quick to install, can be managed centrally, and provides all the necessary security functions.

From a security perspective, it is less important to ask whether Google was right or wrong to collect data. Instead, WiFi users should ask themselves whether they wish to continue to leave their poorly protected or even unencrypted data ‘lying around’ or whether they would rather take action to prevent others from accessing it.

Some employers are still resistant to allowing their employees to work from remote offices – far from the eyes of management. For many managers the concept of telecommuting conjures images of employees in their pajamas doing dishes and laundry and only periodically checking email so they appear to be working. For companies with managers who have this point of view, remote working will never become a reality.  

While telecommuting may be a bonus benefit for some employees, there are some professions where working from home isn’t a benefit or even a privilege but a requirement above the normal 40 hour work week. Doctors, attorneys and other professionals who put work a full week in the office often have to take work home with them in order to keep up with flow of work. Doctors do paper work at home so they can see more patients during the day and lawyers are judged on how many billable hours the work so they often work even when at home. 

Just like organizations that allow employees to work from home as a perk, healthcare facilities and law offices must provide doctors and lawyers with a secure connection to the office. For the occasional telecommuter a VPN connection is sufficient.  However a simple VPN connection may not be enough o connect and secure a doctor’s or lawyer’s home. Actually, one could argue that it is even more important for these professions to have secure connections due to the sensitive and private information they work with. As educated and intelligent as most doctors and lawyers are, many of them do not have the technical expertise or the time needed to set up and then manage a Unified Threat Management device at their home. They simply aren’t security experts, nor should they have to be.

This is where products like Astaro RED come in. South Carolina Law Firm Turner Padget Graham & Laney was able to overcome the challenge of having lawyers connect from remote locations to the main office by using Astaro RED. You can read more about this here.  

To learn more about Astaro RED and other product from Astaro (like Astaro Mail Archiving, Astaro Wireless Security and Astaro Security Gateway) visit booth #629 at Interop.

Full distribution of 8.002 is scheduled for September 30th. After 8.002 is made available, 7.508 will then be issued. Soft-release will be on September 30th, with Up2Date generally available on approximately October 7th. This release, (amongst other things), will add the one-touch upgrade to V8 for all ASG V7 Hardware Appliance installations. More information will follow as the Up2Date packages are made available. 

*Our soft-release process sees Up2Dates posted on our FTP for manual installation, followed by the GA "push" via our Up2Date infrastructure approximately 1-2 weeks later. The UBB at www.astaro.org is where soft-release announcements are made).

New Features

FIPS compatibility is always given if the following algorithms are used for set up and encryption of the IPsec connection:

• DH Group: Group 2 or higher (DH starting from a length of 1024 Bit)
• Hash Algorithms: SHA1, SHA 256, SHA 384, or SHA 512 Bit
• Encryption Algorithms: AES with 128, 192 and 256 Bit or Triple DES

Fixes
With Windows 7 data could not be exchanged via a VPN tunnel if the internet connection was using UMTS or mobile broadband but had not been established by the Astaro IPsec client. This has been fixed.

---------------------

IMPORTANT NOTE:
Starting with Release 10.22 the following features are no longer included with the Astaro IPsec Client:

• Connection to 3rd party gateways (except Astaro)
• Integrated Dialing and Wi-Fi support
• Pre-Logon, Logon Options
• Hotspot-Logon
• Integrated dynamic Personal Firewall
• Link-Firewall
• EAP
• IPsec compression
• Configurable UDP-encapsulation options
• Budget Manager
• Tips of the day

How to update your client software

There are two ways for updating your client:

1. Start the Astaro IPsec Client Monitor on your desktop. On the menu select "Help -> Search for New Updates". Click "Next" on the upcoming "Software Update Wizard" window. The client will now automatically search for new updates. If a newer version is found, you can click on the "Next" button to start the automatic installation immediately.
2. Use MyAstaro to download the new client software from our HTTP or FTP Server. When installing the new software an already existing version will be recognized and updated accordingly.

If you want an evaluation copy of Astaro IPsec Client, go to MyAstaro and complete a short form to create a MyAstaro account. You will then be taken to a screen where you can download a 30-day evaluation version of Astaro IPsec Client.

License information

For using the new features you either need to have a valid V9.2 or V10.2 license.

If your license has a lower version number then you can upgrade it to a V10.2 license by purchasing a one-time update license, which allows updating of an existing license by one or two releases. When purchasing the license you'll receive an activation key which must be applied to your existing license within MyAstaro. You'll then be offered a new file for download including the key that needs to be entered into your client.

For more information please visit our website.
Your Product Management Team

This fix was applied successfully by the pattern script, but the script had the unwanted side effect of removing a directory on the disk. This directory contains some temporary data used internally by the Astaro system and also, on version 7 systems, it contains a copy of some system libraries. These libraries were replaced by another pattern which was delivered approximately 2-3 hours later (depending on the version running).

Most customers and systems should not have experienced any issue. The system was correctly patched and the y2k38 problem has be circumvented.

However, the loss of temporary data meant that HA systems appeared to have lost the link between master and slave. In fact, they have not and the HA system is working normally, but WebAdmin does not show the correct status. This issue has, in almost most cases, been resolved either by rebooting the system or by an additional pattern which has been delivered on Monday and Tuesday (depending on the version). Although working correctly, we recommend that HA systems are rebooted at the next available maintenance window.

If a license was uploaded during the 2-3 hour period, then the new license was not recognised (because of a missing library) and the system reverted to a trial license. Uploading a new license once the library was replaced corrected this.

If the system was rebooted during the 2-3 hour period, the Astaro system fails to start. It was then necessary to log on through the console and manually recreate the missing directory and copy the missing libraries.

I and my team are clearly embarrassed to have to report such a situation and we sincerely hope that you have not been too inconvenienced by this issue. I understand that this is not an acceptable level of quality and that you should, and do, expect better from Astaro. We need to earn your trust and have therefore immediately made some changes to our software delivery process to eliminate these mistakes and ensure that in future we do meet your expectations as a partner.

Regards,
Richard Walford

Why archive e-mail?
Mailbox servers often suffer from the heavy load of growing e-mail traffic and administrators struggle with mailbox quotas and user storage demands. Employees laboriously sift through their mails sorted in inbox folders, trying to retrieve lost communication.

Astaro Mail Archiving puts an end to these pains:

• It seamlessly integrates into existing messaging environments
• It is ready to use in 15 minutes
• It requires minimal administration

++ Exclusive Mail Archiving Kick-Start Promotion ++

For our existing Astaro customers with a valid license for Astaro Security Gateway, we offer an extended trial license expiring November 30th, 2010 for the use of Astaro Mail Archiving with up to 100 users.

Please register here: http://www.astaro.com/resources/astaro-mail-archiving/register.

Or contact your local Astaro Reseller for more information.

Download your copy in our Product Information PDF section of the Astaro website.

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We work constantly to ensure all our customers' networks are secure and connected no matter what version of the Astaro Security Gateway they are running. This is why we wanted to inform our partners and customers of an upcoming software challenge we have identified that may affect installations using older versions of the Astaro Security Gateway.

Please read below:

• What is the issue?
• How can this issue be resolved?
• What can I do if I have a problem on Sept. 4th?
• Detailed "What should I do?" Workflow

In case you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact your usual Astaro representative.

Kind regards,
Your Astaro Team

-----------------------------------

What is the issue?
Astaro products use so called X.509 certificates (think of it as a kind of digital passport - see Wikipedia) internally for VPN, Astaro RED, Mail Encryption, WebGUI and a few more areas. Such certificates are only valid for a limited amount of time and we chose to set the expiration date far into the future (>27,4 years into the future) to be sure that our customers do not experience problems with expiring certificates.

Unfortunately, we now will stumble upon a common problem known as the "Year 2038 Problem" or the "Unix Millennium Bug" (Wikipedia). Starting September 4th, 2010 the expiration date of newly created CA-certificates will be beyond Jan 19th 2038, and therefore will be invalid.

Running installations are unlikely to experience any issues, as only a few very specific and rarely used administrator actions will trigger this issue. But installing new Astaro products with software versions 7.506 and older after Sept. 4th will not work, as the initial setup will fail. Please read the "Detailed Workflow" below for more information.

How can this issue be resolved?
Update to the latest version!

The issue has been fixed with the Up2Dates 7.507 and 8.001 which were released August 13th and all existing customers should update to this version before September 4th in order to be safe. Partners and Customers who still have Astaro Appliances in stock must reinstall them with version 7.507 or 8.001 prior setup or shipment.

All Astaro downloads and un-shipped units in the warehouse have been updated! New installation images can be found here http://download.astaro.com/.

What can I do if I a have a problem on Sept. 4th?
In order to ensure that all Astaro customers receive all the help they need, all Astaro customers are entitled to call the Astaro Support Hotline directly and we are on standby for you over the whole weekend (September 4th / 5th).

If you need help, please contact your nearest location: http://www.astaro.com/support/support-hotline

Detailed "What should I do?" Workflow
Below you find all possible conditions an Astaro installation can be in and a recommendation on what should be done: (The same procedures apply for AWG/AMG/ACC installations)

ASG is running at Version 7.507 or 8.001
These customers have no problems, and do not need to do anything.

ASG is running Version 7.506 or earlier, or 8.000
These customers will experience no issues during "normal" operation, however certain actions after September 4th will trigger the problem:

Performing a factory reset will cause subsequent initial setup process to fail, which leads to no access to WebAdmin. Regenerating a Certificate Authority (like for the HTTP/S proxy, WebAdmin, or VPN/ Remote Access) will cause the problem. Certificates created using that new CA are invalid.
Activating mail encryption or Astaro RED for the first time will cause the problem. Activating the feature will fail.
Solution: Up2Date or reinstall to 7.507 or 8.001 before September 4th.

Customers which re-install their ASG/ACC using an old ISO image
These customers will have an affected installation and be in the same situation as outlined above.

Solution: Reinstall the system with the latest ISO image (7.507+ or 8.001+) which can be found at http://download.astaro.com

Partners with appliances in stock with ASG Versions 7.506 or earlier, or 8.000
These boxes are affected. Installing them after September 4th will cause the initial setup process to fail, which leads to no access to WebAdmin. Solution: Partner must update their ASG Appliances using a CD-Rom or Astaro Smart Installer before shipping to customer.

ACC is running at Version 2.200 or earlier
These customers will experience some issues.
Solution: Up2Date to 2.201, which will be released on or around August 27th.

Installations which are unable/unwilling to Up2Date to 7.507 or 8.001 or 2.201
We recommend upgrading to 7.507 or 8.001, but in case this is impossible we will provide a solution for these installations via our Pattern Up2date mechanism:

1. The unit must be online and connected to the internet
2. The customer needs to have a valid maintenance subscription
3. Pattern download/installation interval setting must not be set to "Manual"

The system searches regularly for updates and installs them automatically. After the pattern has been applied, the issue will be fixed.
All installations using 7.506 or earlier and V8.000 will receive this fix. You can easily check if this fix has been applied to your installation by checking the "Pattern Version" on the ASG dashboard. If the pattern version is greater than or equal to 20,000 than the fix has been applied.

We plan to start distributing the pattern on or around August 26th.
Solution: Do nothing and check the pattern version beginning of September.

In case you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact your usual Astaro representative.

Best regards,
Your Astaro Team

For ACC 2.201, we have new ISO images and the Up2Date itself available for download from our FTP and mirriors. Of course, our Up2Date infrastructure will distribute the package to you. New VMware and Astaro Smart Installer images will be available in approximately the next 24 hours.

Official Details

Remarks:

• System will be rebooted

News:

• This Up2Date should be applied before end of August 2010

Fixes:

• Fix [14883] Overflow in certificate creation will cause invalid certificates

Up2Date Package:
Size: 8,147,009 bytes
Md5: db37f0c76df9a4abdd5547c60dc3d675
FTP: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ACC/v2/up2date/

Software Appliance ISO Image:
Size: 611,086,336 bytes
Md5: 9fa4ee88a8b3e0fd585202e956a2246b
FTP : ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ACC/v2/software_appliance/iso/

Hardware Appliance ISO Image:
Size: 615,235,584 bytes
Md5: a8db4aed5734b8fb874f219517f1b455
FTP : ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ACC/v2/hardware_appliance/iso/

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ACC V2.2 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please take care to add always(!) the version you refer to (e.g. "[2.200] World Map Labelling").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server: http://demo.astaro.com

(All Up2Dates are GNUPG-signed!)

Regards,
The Astaro Product Management Team

The resulting interview can be heard here: www.astaro.com/webinars/data-integrity-podcast.mp3

As a result support teams at many technology companies have scored poorly on customer satisfaction surveys. Why? Because they end up only interacting with customers when they are having a problem and are angry. Here are some ways support departments can

Focus on education first
I hate to say it, but a lot of times the issues our customers are having are not because our products didn't work correctly. It is because they were not properly trained on how to set up, configure or maintain the product. This is the support team's responsibility Just as much as it is the sales team or the customer's. Support teams that create ways for customers to educate themselves have a better chance of having customers that rate the support team favorably.

One way Astaro is doing this is by creating a Knowledge base for customers and partners. This Knowledge base will house articles about Astaro product written by Astaro's support team and partners. These articles will explain how to overcome common issues, ways to configure Astaro products and more.

Communication is key
Of course part of education is communication. Support teams should communicate any issues the company's product is having, along with the solution quickly and accurately. Additionally, when product upgrades or enhancements are made, the vendor should create alert systems for the customers along with links to information about the new features.

Like most organizations Astaro has had issues where we needed to communicate to our entire customer base at once. Unfortunately, there wasn't a system in place to do this quickly outside of email. As a result we began developing a unique alert system for our partners using SMS messages. The system is still in the works but we foresee it being a helpful communication tool

Empower your customers
Another way to improve Support services is by empowering them. Make your customers feel as if they have the power to solve their own issues without support, and can to help solve the problems of others. Astaro has a user forum where customers, partners and Astaro employees can discuss issues they are having, talk about unique applications of the product or answer the questions of others. This forum is open to user regardless of their support level status and has a very active community. Even some of Astaro's executives respond to questions from time to time.

Why is this important? It makes your customers feel heard and respected. It also gives them an opportunity to share they knowledge they already have. And when Astaro's Vice President of Product Management responds to your query it lets you know the company is listening.

Keeping these concepts in mind will help organizations understand that if they use their support team for more than just speaking with customers in need of assistance the entire organization will be better off. Support should be a proactive department, just like any other department in your organization.

ASG uses certificates for different purposes (such as for each user that is created) and CAs (certificate authorities) for signing the certificates mentioned before. When performing the initial setup, some CAs as well as the admin certificate are generated.

When passing a certain point in time the theoretical end-date for our certs and CAs is beyond 19 January 2038 which will cause trouble to the system as the end-date of a cert/CA must not be before the start-date.

*SUMMARY NOTICE*
Any and all systems which have this up2date applied before the end of August 2010 will be completely free from troubles or consequences as a result of this global Linux/Unix issue. If you apply it, you can avoid needing to educate yourself further.

For units which are not updated before then, we will issue a single fix for this bug via a specially crafted pattern Up2Date as well, which will be automatically patched/applied without updating the firmware version.

If you would like more education on this issue, you can read more about it here via Wikipedia's entry: Year 2038 problem.

Official Details

Remarks:

• Configuration will not be upgraded
• System will be rebooted

News:

• This Up2Date should be applied before end of August 2010

Fixes:

• Fix [14657] Overflow in certificate creation will cause invalid certificates

Manual Package Download Information

Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v7/up2date/u2d-sys-7.507.tgz.gpg
Md5: 321e9f87525bc36dcfdd9531a6a1e5a0
Size: 8,147,144 bytes (Approx 8MB)

Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your installed Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1) Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)

2) Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro AxG Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V7 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please take care to add always(!) the version you refer to (e.g. "[7.507] Astaro Web Content Filter Profiles Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server: http://demo.astaro.com (All Up2Dates are GNUPG-signed!)

Regards,
The Astaro Product Management Team

You will find 8.001 available for install via Up2Date on your installation. Mainly a bug fix release, this package will enhance the stability and operation of ASG V8, and addresses an issue with Unix time affecting certificates. Read on for the full details of this Up2Date.

This release fixes some bugs with how Web Application Security handles connections for protection of Outlook Web Access servers, optimizing that communication. We have also adjusted the very popular Country Blocking to ensure traffic can flow to essential Astaro Internet resources (Eg. RED provisioning servers, global email scanning repositories etc.) so that your blocking choices won't interfere with ASG operations. In addition, some other bugs were addressed and some hardware glitches for our software users and their platforms of choice were solved.

On addressing the Unix Time issue:
ASG uses certificates for different purposes (such as for each user that is created) and CAs (certificate authorities) for signing the certificates mentioned before. When performing the initial setup, some CAs as well as the admin certificate are generated.

When passing a certain point in time the theoretical end-date for our certs and CAs is beyond 19 January 2038 which will cause trouble to the system as the end-date of a cert/CA must not be before the start-date.

*SUMMARY NOTICE*
Any and all systems which have this up2date applied before the end of August 2010 will be completely free from troubles or consequences as a result of this global Linux/Unix issue. If you apply it, you can avoid needing to educate yourself further.

For units which are not updated before then, we will issue a single fix for this bug via a specially crafted pattern Up2Date as well, which will be automatically patched/applied without updating the firmware version.

If you would like more education on this issue, you can read more about it here via Wikipedia's entry: Year 2038 problem.

Official Details

Download Information
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/up2date/u2d-sys-8.001.tgz.gpg
Size: 81MB
MD5Sum: eaf81f4137425f04fd6a512f7e6285ec

Remarks:

• System will be rebooted.
• Configuration will be updated.
• HTTP Proxy cache will deleted.

News:

• This Up2Date should be applied before end of August 2010
• Added: HTML rewriting in Web Application Firewall.
• Fixed: Country based blocking can no longer block essential ASG functionality.
• Added exceptions for spam scanning servers, ACC, notification smarthost, NTP servers, and SNMP trap sinks.

Fixes:

[14688]: UNIX Epoch ends in 9999 days, so certificates cannot last longer
[14364] ASG does not use ESMTP for "Skip TLS negotiation hosts"
[14400] WAF disabled in predefined reverse proxy profiles
[14427] No successful boot with Perc H200
[14469] Country Blocking blocks essential services
[14519] GRUB fails to install properly on some HP servers
[14637]: Bridge interface gets unresponsive after change of IP addresses
[14735]: ASG 625a with versions 8 and 8.001 recognizing NIC order wrong
[14759]: Setting system time forward causes WebAdmin to get unresponsive for a while

For the ASG 8.0 Release Notes click here.

Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version.

There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1) Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)

2) Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro AxG Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please take care to add always(!) the version you refer to (e.g. "[8.001] WAN Link Balancing Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server for public use: http://demo.astaro.com

(All Up2Dates are GNUPG-signed!)

Regards,
The Astaro Product Management Team

During my career as a channel manager and director I've encountered partners who were reluctant to create a professional relationship with a woman simply because they assume women are not as adept with technology as men. While this assumption is unfair, it is a reality all women in technology must deal with an overcome. Here are some tips for creating strong professional relationships with your organization's partners - no matter what your gender.

Earn respect
No matter what your gender is, if your partner doesn't respect you, your relationship is doomed to fail. They won't return your calls promptly, they'll marginalize your advice and basically the partnership won't work. To earn your partners' respect begin by behaving in a professional manner upon your first meeting. Demonstrate your knowledge of the market they operate in and your company's technology. This will show your partner that you know your stuff and that you have advice worth listening too. Be sure to dress professionally to project your professionalism by your appearance. And of course speak confidently, even if you are feeling self conscience - remember the old adage, 'fake it 'til you make it". Even when you feel you aren't being respected behave as if you should be.

Deliver on promises
When you are discussing margins, marketing ideas or any other topic be sure to know what you can actually deliver for your partner. It will take just one failed promise to make your partner distrust your advice or worse, you in general. If you promise your partner additional margins if they sell a certain volume or your product, be sure they receive it when they deliver on their end of the bargain. Failure to do so will mean they will distrust your promises in the future and stop working hard for you. Let's put it this way, if a friend told you they would give you $10 for picking their child up from school and then never paid you, would you be as willing to pick up their child again? In the end it isn't about the $10, it is about being respected. If your partner feels you don't respect them, they won't respect you.

Listen more than you talk
What do you partners need to succeed? What do they hope to get out of this partnership? What are the challenges they are facing? If you don't know then you aren't asking enough question and you aren't listening enough. Creating a successful relationship requires you to understand your partners but you can't do that if you aren't listening to their needs. So ask questions, find out how you can help and once again deliver.

Keep it professional...
Your partner doesn't need to know about your wild weekend in Vegas or your fight with your mother. They come to you for technical, business or sales advise and believe you are incapable of helping them if they see you as a party girl, immature or just plain crazy. The more they know about your personal life the harder it is to get them to respect you as a professional.

But be sure you get to know your partners
That being said, you have to have some level of familiarity with your partners. Relationships, even business relationships are about people. No partner wants to feel like they are working with a robot and no one can be all business all the time. So ask them about their family, talk to them about your weekend at the zoo with your niece and chit-chat about vacation plans or the weather. Short friendly conversations will foster a friendly relationship and a sense of trust. And if your partner likes you your relationship will be stronger.

Know when to bring in the reinforcements
No matter how professional, how confident and how knowledgeable you are, some men will still have a hard time taking a woman in technology seriously or showing her respect. This problem only gets worse if you are young or appear young for your age. So don't be too proud to bring in a trusted colleague to help the conversation progress. At first it may seem like you are deferring to older male co-workers but if you trust your colleague then over time the respect your partner automatically grants him will slowly transfer to you and the relationship will become your own. It may not seem fair, but by slowly gaining respect this way, you will potentially change the attitude of your partner towards young, professional women forever.

To hear the full PodCast interview with Jack Daniel, click here.

This release is focused around adding great new abilities like Global configuration of Packet Filter rules and Web Security settings and profiles. We have also other fantastic features to make your life easier when working with ASG. Regardless of if you have one, or hundreds of installations, you are sure to find something that saves you time with ACC!

Astaro Command Center 2.2 Features

HTTP/S Proxy Configuration Support

• Build and deploy Web Security profiles and configuration from within ACC!
• Lets you centralize your Web Security settings and globally deploy and change policy across some or all connected ASG installations. -Work with Filter Actions, URL Categories, Exceptions, and Proxy Auto-Configuration (PAC) files.

Packet Filter Configuration

• You can now make Network Security configuration settings in ACC for packet filter rules, and deploy them as needed to your selection of ASG devices.
• Build rules like you normally do in ASG
• Craft rule sets composed of your rules for deployment to ASG installations.
• Deploy to organizational units, select the position of the deployed rules (Eg. on top of existing rules in the ASG), and view/change/revoke rules with ease.

Auto Deployment of Definitions

• Continually updates selected ASG's with new/changed definitions
• Removes the need to manually select installations and deploy objects
• Keeps multiple installations constantly synced to the latest versions of definitions and other items

New Global Definition Types

• To further assist global deployment and true central management, two new definition types can be configured centrally.
• Time events can be defined and worked with via Definitions-->Time Events in the Gateway Manager
• IPSec policies can be defined and worked with via Configuration-->VPN-->IPSec policies in the Gateway Manager. You no longer need to choose only from pre-defined policies in ACC.

Object Merge Granularity Options

• Allows you to choose merge operations when deploying Global Objects which already exist locally on the ASG.
• Great for assisting migration from per-box configuration to ACC central configuration
• When a definition already exists, choose to overwrite it completely, skip it, or keep the name and just update the data with the Global Objects parameters.
• Many powerful uses for assisting the saving of your time across multiple ASG's!

Other Changes and Features

• Features accessible to the ACC can be restricted on an ASG (aka privilege restriction). You can configure this from Management-->Central Management in ASG 7.506/V8.000.
• Up2Date Cache restricts access to Up2Date servers, and is now ASG V8 compatible
• Expired licensing subscriptions will see their impact on monitoring levels decay over time and become less of a factor as a result.
• IPSec VPN Configuration can now re-use global network definitions and global/custom IPSec policies.

*More information about the various features of ACC 2.2 can be found in the ACC 2.2 release notes

Requirements
*ACC 2.200 requires at least ASG V7.506 or V8.000 for full compatibility.
**ASG features for allowing communication to two ACC servers and SSO real name pass-through are already implemented in ACC 2.2 and just awaiting ASG 7.507 and 8.002 releases.

Download Information
ACC 2.2 is available initially as an Up2date package from version 2.100 or Beta users at Version 2.180. ISO images are also available for full installations of ACC 2.2. Virtual Machine Images and an Up2Date push for existing installations will be released next week, along with new, detailed release notes for ACC 2.2

------------------------------
ACC Up2Date from 2.100 --> Version 2.2:
URL: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/Astaro_Command_Center/v2/up2date/u2d-sys-2.200.tgz.gpg
Size: 259MB
md5sum: 91842af0d63f67e8d3e0b0d0f26ce185

------------------------------
ACC Software Appliance ISO 2.200
URL: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/Astaro_Command_Center/v2/software_appliance/iso/acc-2.200-100715-3.iso
Size: 578MB
md5sum: 29d47dc87398c61725c0127cb1164455

------------------------------
ACC Up2Date from BETA 2.180 --> Version 2.2:
URL: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/Astaro_Command_Center/v2/beta/u2d-sys-2.180-200.tgz.gpg
Size: 22MB
md5sum: 969963597aa2408028e19a411634f1b3

Astaro ACC Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ACC V2.2 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please take care to always(!) add the version you refer to (e.g. "[2.2] HTTP Proxy Profile Push Question").

If you have feedback to our documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com. There is also a demo server which will run ACC Version 2.2 shortly: http://accdemo.astaro.com

Regards,
- Your Astaro Product Management Team

As well, the ASG installations will receive some updated files for support of the next point-release of Astaro Command Center V2.2. We also take the opportunity to fix a few small bugs.

This will be pushed out via our Up2Date infrastructure, however if you would just like to manually download it you can do so here. Otherwise read on for the details.

This version is focused around introducing the necessary options and menu items for our new Wireless Security solution. There is a new WebAdmin section called "Wireless Security" which contains an overview and controls. More details on the public wireless beta and the products themselves will be made available shortly. Changes and updates were made to the Astaro Command Center agent as well to prepare it for the upcoming GA release of ACC V2.2.

Official Details

Download Information
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v7/up2date/u2d-sys-7.506.tgz.gpg
Size: 132.9MB (139,362,483 bytes)
Md5 : 614a8436398437c64cb7900c3b23601b

Remarks:

• Configuration will be upgraded
• System will be rebooted

*BETA Testers: Your connected access points will perform a firmware upgrade after 7.506 installs on the ASG. As with most firmware "flashing" operations, please do NOT power off your Access Point(s) while the LED's are blinking furiously during their patching process, or you might be left with a non-working unit!

News:

• Added Wireless Security support and WebAdmin area in preparation for upcoming public Beta phase (stay tuned!)
• Added support for upcoming ACC 2.2 release
• Added support for updated/renamed "Astaro IPsec Client"
• Improved Online help for ASG

Fixes:
Fix [12668]: FTP directory listing over HTTP Proxy may not work correctly
Fix [14025]: Site-to-Site SSL Server fails to add routes when bounced quickly

For the ASG 7.5 Release Notes click here.

Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your installed Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1) Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)

2) Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:

Astaro AxG Up2Date Download Mirrors:

• Astaro US
• Astaro US2
• Astaro Germany
• Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V7 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please take care to add always(!) the version you refer to (e.g. "[7.506] Astaro AP 30 Question").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documentation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server: http://demo.astaro.com (All Up2Dates are GNUPG-signed!)

Regards,
The Astaro Product Management Team

Here is the recording of their converstation about Astaro's partner program and the security industry.

URL:  www.astaro.com/podcasts/astaro-insider-frances-poeta-interview.mp3

Our open approach to feature requests set a new standard for visibility into our planning and allowed us to listen while we provided constant feedback and updates to you.

Today, we continue the success enjoyed by ASG Version 7. You will find a fresh WebAdmin GUI and improved auditing and compliance features. New features like VPN reporting, WebAdmin change tracking, new rights & roles abilities for multiple administrators, and the ability to print out the entire configuration for auditing or record keeping have been introduced. Support for IPv6 and a new 64-bit kernel have been implemented, along with many convenience features such as an easy way to search through all of WebAdmin and country blocking to prevent all communication with entire countries or regions.

Focusing on usable technology, our teams worked hard to make sure our product is easily configurable to solve real problems faced by businesses without the need for months of specialized training in how to use ASG features.

This post provides an overview of Version 8, how to get it, how to get using it, and the key dates and other information you need in order to begin using or selling this fantastic new release. Read on for full details and download information!

As this is a major new version, you will likely have questions about various areas. I'd like to invite you to first review this post for the answers you seek. If you require additional help or information, your Astaro partner or sales contact will happily assist you. Remember you can always check our website or ask for help from our community at www.astaro.org.

About Astaro Security Gateway Version 8
This new version includes the following new features. Presented here is a general overview; for extended information and descriptions (and the full list of all changes in Version 8) please see the accompanying ASG Version 8 release notes. You may also wish to look in the V8 WebAdmin for the new manual (Support-->Manual) and online help (click the "?" icon anywhere).

What's New? Highlights of Major New Things

• Updated WebAdmin - New colors, fonts, and visuals make WebAdmin more easily readable with crisper overall presentation
• IPv6 - Support has been added for the next iteration of IP addressing throughout ASG
• New Kernel and Base System - Provides 64-bit support, massively increased hardware compatibility, and better performance
• Country Blocking - Deny communications to/from any combination of countries and/or regions
• Web Application Security - A new subscription has been added to our protection portfolio which protects your web servers from modern attacks, hackers, viruses and data theft
• Flash-Based Reporting - Reporting data can be displayed via animated charts which add strong visual representations to how the data is presented
• WebAdmin Rights & Roles - Let multiple administrators or auditors share duties by separating access permissions; for example giving someone the ability to work only with the Mail Quarantine
• Configuration Change Tracking - Aid compliance and accountability efforts by identifying what was changed by an administrator on a forensic level
• Printable Configuration - Save the contents of the entire system as an XML file to aid compliance efforts and record keeping
• New Online Help - Improved layout coupled with new feature set updates this reference to be faster and more useful in retrieving information on demand
• VPN Remote Access Reporting - Displays usage graphs for the various types of user connections, along with historical data for examining session information
• WebAdmin Menu Search - Instantly filter the menu to show sections of WebAdmin based on a search query box; great for locating an option or feature quickly
• Web Content Filter Override - Allow configured users and groups to bypass URL filtering block pages by providing credentials and entering a reason, all of which can be tracked using new override reports

Other Features and Changes

• New installer for software appliances with improved navigation and troubleshooting options
• Custom certificates support lets you remove browser warnings when accessing WebAdmin or the UserPortal
• Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controller authentication support
• Reverse DNS for creating reverse mappings in static DNS
• Uninterrupted Intrusion Protection updates keep traffic flowing when new patterns are introduced
• Rule numbering is preserved during search queries, making it easier to locate the resulting rules and where they sit in the configuration order
• Exceptions improvements for HTTP/S and IPS now allow the use of granular "and/or" operators
• Site-to-Site VPN's using PSK may now have different keys using PSK probing when configured as respond-only
• Multiple syslog servers are supported which allows logging data to be sent to multiple locations simultaneously for preservation
• Dozens of other usability improvements and minor feature additions!

"How Do I Get Version 8?"
ASG Version 8 gives you some options in how to begin using our latest version. Again, the release notes have detailed instructions for the available processes but summary information is below. Be aware that while existing licenses and their subscriptions are valid, if you have not already done so you need to login to MyAstaro and upgrade your license to our new on-demand format introduced back in February, as Version 8 will only accept this license style.

Depending on factors such as if you currently use ASG V7 and what your needs are you will have certain requirements which will be met via the following key dates:

June 30th - ASG V8 ISO Images Available
For ASG appliances or installations using ASG software on their own platforms, download the ASG V8 ISO image (see below), make a backup, install with USB CD-Rom or Astaro Smart Installer and restore your configuration via the backup. *NOTE* Beta testers of V8 are able to Up2Date to the GA V8.000 release without needing to re-install. Check the Up2Date section your existing Beta installation and install the GA Up2Date package to move to the GA release.

August 15th - ASG V7 Appliance Upgrade Option
Approximately in mid-August, we will publish an Up2Date for V7 which will add a button which automatically migrates your appliance and configuration from V7 to V8. As in the past, for quality assurance and hardware compatibility reasons, it will not possible to one-touch upgrade non-ASG appliances (software installations on custom hardware) using this method.

October 1st - Appliances ship pre-installed with V8
Until this time, new appliances will ship with Version 7 installed. Customers who purchase new appliances and wish to use ASG Version 8 can install the ISO image or have their partner assist them with this. Astaro Support can also answer questions on how to image your new appliance with Version 8. *Note* In addition, throughout this period, Up2Dates for V8.00x will be released as planned/required.

Download Information

ASG Hardware Images

ASG Hardware Appliance ISO Image
(for use on official ASG appliances)
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/hardware_appliance/iso/ssi-8.000-7.1.iso
Size: 348 MB (378179584 bytes)
Md5 : 84cdb87909167e0915b01eafca153c09

ASG Hardware Appliance ISO for Astaro Smart Installer
(for using V1 of the ASI product to install ASG on official appliances)
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/hardware_appliance/smart_installer/v1/ssi-8.000-7.1-ASI.zip
Size: 348 MB (365,686,141) bytes
Md5 : ab6b709c2dd258fbe1a5748ab485636c

ASG Software Images

ASG Software ISO Image
(for use on your own hardware)
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/software_appliance/iso/asg-8.000-7.1.iso
Size: 350 MB (368021504 bytes)
Md5 : 5bf91962005658df789b071036ed5501

ASG Software ISO Image for Astaro Smart Installer
(for using V1 of the ASI Product to install ASG on your own hardware)
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/software_appliance/smart_installer/v1/asg-8.000-7.1-ASI.zip
Size: 339 MB (355587451 bytes)
Md5 : 49cd6d861ceea9c7c28fae86b7ad206c

ASG Virtual Images

ASG ESX Image
(for use with VMware ESX/i)
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/virtual_appliance/asg-8.000-ESX-v3.zip
Size: 884 MB (927819047 bytes)
Md5 : db739b848493d34178992de49ba1e29d

ASG VMware Image
(for quick-use with VMware Player/Server/Workstation)
Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v8/virtual_appliance/asg-8.000-vmware.zip
Size: 859 MB (901489426 bytes)
Md5 : 91fbb2ffd084b03cbf5dcbd2c7835459

*Customers with the new "Version 2" of the Astaro Smart Installer, you will be able to use it with V8 images shortly, check the FTP site for when they are available.

Feedback

If you want to provide feedback or discuss any of the Version 8 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. For best responses, it helps to add the version to which you are referring in the the title of your post for example: "[8.000] - Question about IPv6".

If you have feedback to our documentation like the manual, online help or WebAdmin explanations please send it to docu@astaro.com.

There is also a demo server coming that allows you to try and see Version 8 anytime. You will find it at http://demo.astaro.com shortly.

All Up2Dates are GNUPG-signed! Enjoy our new release.

Regards,
The entire Astaro team

Follow this link for the full article: http://www.mpls-experts.com/blog/

A great deal of scrambling and a few short weeks later, Security BSides Las Vegas happened during the week of BlackHat and DefCon, and it was amazing. A core group of people, assisted by a large group of volunteers, speakers and sponsors put together a two-day event which offered great presentations on a wide mix of topics, a fun environment, and encouraged conversation and participation. Before Security BSides Las Vegas ended, plans had begun for Security BSides San Francisco, to run parallel to the RSA Security Conference, and the BSides phenomenon took off from there. Security BSides conferences are about the community, they are run by and for the participants, and provide a venue for talks and presentations which might not "fit" in other venues. BSides events are also free to attend, so they are a great way to get security education on a tight budget. Each BSides event has its own feel and style, some run parallel to larger events, others are stand-alone, and most are run by members of the local security community. As it says on the Security BSides website:

"Each BSides is a community-driven event built for and by information security community members. The goal is to expand the spectrum of conversation beyond the traditional confines of space and time. It creates opportunities for individuals to both present and participate in an intimate atmosphere that encourages collaboration. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. It is where conversations for the next-big-thing are happening."

There have now been BSides events in Las Vegas, Mountain View (CA), Austin and Boston. There are several BSides events happening this summer and fall:

• June 18 BSidesDenver "Mile High Security"
• July 28-29 BSidesLasVegas - coinciding with Black Hat / Defcon
  • This will be a huge event, the venue is amazing: http://www.2810vegasestate.com
  • The speaker lineup will include both "headliners", and new speakers, covering a wide variety of topics- many that you will not hear anywhere else.
• September 17 BSidesKC (coinciding with an InfraGard supported Cyber-RAID CyberWarefare event)
• September 24-25 Brussels, Belgium, coinciding with BruCon
• October 8 BSidesAtlanta
• TBD BsidesChicago
• November 6 BSidesDFW "Don't mess with Security"
• November 12-13 BSidesOttawa

BSides events are not just a place for experienced speakers, due to the friendly and helpful nature of the community BSides are great places for new or less-experienced speakers to deliver their message in a comfortable environment. The events also strive to provide comfortable spaces for side conversations, or to continue a discussion after a presentation. If you are going to be near any of the upcoming events, please register, attend, and participate.

Why am I writing about BSides events on the Astaro Security Perspectives blog? Well there are a couple of reasons. The first is that education and open discussion is a critical part of securing networks and improving technology in general. How can we solve issues if we don't talk about them? BSides events foster this kind of open and honest communication that mainstream conferences just aren't able to accommodate. Astaro is a supporter of this type of open communications as well as the Bsides conferences and I thought members of our community would be interested in this type of event.

I am affected, what can i do? In order to bypass this rule, log in to WebAdmin and navigate to the "Advanced" tab of the Intrusion Prevention system. There you need to to add a new "rule modification" by clicking on the + sign.

Than set the action "Alert" for rule "15306" like this:

And save it, now it should look like this:

That's it, now the download no longer gets blocked, yet all the .NET exploits will still be blocked.

Best regards,
Gert Hansen

Astaro Command Center 2.2 will remain a completely free product, and is available as a software appliance ISO which you download and install on the hardware of your choice or run inside a VMware virtual machine (or other virtual solution). From there, you quickly configure your Astaro Security Gateway(s) to communicate with ACC and you then get the ability to configure, get overview information, and generate reports for all connected devices, to name just a few things. This leaves you with a sort of "Throne-Room" for your ASG installations.

This version introduces some great new abilities like Global Packet Filter configuration, central configuration of Web Security profiles, and automatic deployment of Global Objects. Read on for all the details.

IMPORTANT NOTE on Compatibility:

In ACC 2.2, a new device agent is required to use the NEW features being introduced. This agent needs ASG V8 (currently in public Beta) V7.920 which is planned for June 1st. For V7 users, the new agent will be added in version 7.506 which should be released in mid to late June.

ACC 2.2 is however fully backwards compatible with ASG V7.5+, only the NEW features require this updated agent. So for full use of the ACC 2.2 Beta and all it's features, you need either V8 Beta 7.920+ or V7.506+. As with our past community-oriented Beta programs, all comments and discussions around the ACC 2.2 Beta are located can be found here in our Beta forum dedicated to ACC 2.2. There you will find further information on this release, along with details on the Beta contest.

Official Details

Download Information

Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ACC/v2/beta/acc-2.150-100531-3.iso
Size: 569M (596305920 bytes)
MD5: 8ecec0fc5d7680a41332e616f76eb0f2

Remarks

• Install Beta ISO and restore your ACC backup to it.
• You will be able to Up2Date from the Beta to the GA release of ACC 2.2

News

• New Feature: Central Web Security Configuration (Including Filter Actions, URL Categories, Exceptions and Proxy Auto-Configuration)
• New Feature: Central Packet-Filter Configuration
• New Feature: Auto-Deployment of global definitions based on Organizational Unit
• New Feature: Added new global definition types
• (Time events & IPsec policies)
• Selectable merge granularity when capturing local definitions during deployment of global ones
• IPSec configuration can now re-use global network definitions and global/custom IPsec policies
• Expired license subscriptions will gradually loose impact on monitoring level
• Bug fixes and many other small improvements

But wait, there's more! During the Beta, additional features will be introduced. Added will be the ability to add a second ACC server connection, place some restrictions on the areas of ASG which ACC is allowed to interact with, and Single Sign On real name pass-through.

Enjoy testing this new release, there is a lot to see and use. Remember if you have any questions, or would like to know more about the Beta program for ACC 2.2, please visit our the ACC 2.2 Beta Forum.

Happy testing everyone,
Angelo Comazzetto
Product Manager

As good as this scenario sounds there are other trust relationships which must be considered:

• Your employees trust you to provide a safe work environment, free from hostile or objectionable materials. This can be difficult when even the most innocent Internet searches can return obscene or otherwise offensive content.
• Your customers, business partners, and employees trust you to protect their confidential data. The proliferation of web-hosted malicious software has turned web browsing into a dangerous activity, putting your systems at risk of infection or compromise, which in turn puts the information stored on and accessed by those systems at risk.
• An ever-increasing number of laws and regulations require you to protect your employees, to protect sensitive data, and to report any data breaches. This magnifies the importance of protecting your employees and your data.

Web content filtering does not need to be overly restrictive to be effective. And there is no need to threaten the trust an organization has fostered with their employees in order to protect your organization, your employees and your clients from malicious content. A strong web content filtering solution will allow you to filter content based on your organizations acceptable use policy so that you can continue allowing your employees free access to the Internet with the exception of inappropriate and dangerous sites.

The devices can cut the cost of securing and administering a branch office's security by up to 80% by eliminating the need for IT staff and additional security products at the remote office.

More information can be found here: www.astaro.com/news-events/press-releases/astaro-red-simplifying-branch-office-security

As part of our extending the home user licensing to 50 IP addresses last winter, we now are introducing a small change to the customization ability of installations using ASG at home. Focused around the Web Security block page (and other customization areas), a "home-user only" notice will appear and customizations of these types of pages is now limited. This allows us to continue to offer such a large amount of total protection for free home use without any other limitations. Full details of V7.505 are below...

Official Details

Download Information

Link: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASG/v7/up2date/u2d-sys-7.505.tgz.gpg
Size: 142MB
MD5Sum: f75b4cc3ff92996c07f455c9f35fe0f1

Remarks:

• Configuration will be upgraded
• System will be rebooted
• Connected RED devices will perform firmware upgrade
  RED USERS: Your device will perform a firmware upgrade (blinking LEDs) - do not power off the RED unit while upgrading, as this can cause firmware problems.

News:

• New Feature: Read-only WebAdmin user role
• New Feature: Support for multiple syslog servers
• New Feature: XAuth Support for Site-Site IPSEC Tunnels
• Restricted customization capabilities for Home-User Licensed Installations
• For the new things in ASG 7.5 you can view the Release Notes here.

 Fixes:

[11239]: New Yahoo messenger not detected by IM/P2P security
[11496]: State of additional addresses remains at DOWN after the daily reconnect
[11621]: Packet filter is dropping own DNS replies
[11780]: IPsec Remote Access Errors
[11844]: Cannot use HTTPS scanning in a profile if HTTPS is not enabled for the global settings.
[11857]: Serial numbers showing up as "MISSING" in the WebAdmin dashboard
[12956]: Static routes missing in back end when activating High Availability
[13690]: Removed debug messages in kernel log on HA/Cluster with IPsec

Astaro Up2Date technology makes it easy to upgrade your installed Astaro Security Gateway to the latest version. There are two ways to apply an Up2Date package to the system:

1. Log on to WebAdmin, navigate to Management >> Up2Date >> Overview and use Update to latest version now to install the Firmware Up2Date. Click on the "Watch Up2Date Progress in new window" and an extra browser window will show the progress of the Up2Date installation. (The System administrator will receive a notification email once the Up2Date process has finished.)
2. Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced:
   Astaro AxG Up2Date Download Mirrors:
   - Astaro US
   - Astaro US2
   - Astaro Germany
   - Astaro Germany2

Feedback

• If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ASG V7 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please take care to add always(!) the version you refer to (e.g. "[7.505] Syslog Server Settings ").
• If you have any feedback on our help, manual, or any documenation (Online Help) please send it to docu@astaro.com.
• There is also a demo server: http://demo.astaro.com (All Up2Dates are GNUPG-signed!)

Cheers,
Your Astaro Product Management Team

Trips to computer labs to conduct research, type papers or for other educational purposes often dissolve into game time or involve non-school related web-surfing. The popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook only add to student's temptations, making it harder for them to remain focused on their lesson or assignment when they have free access to these sites. It is partially the responsibility of educators to monitor student Internet usage during school hours and on school computers.

Implementing guidelines for Internet usage can be affective in curbing access to distracting or inappropriate sites while at school, but these policies are difficult to enforce because students are technology are able to hide their actions well. Often times administrators are unaware what sites are being accessed until after the fact, then it is too late to determine who accessed the site and when the damage is already done. So now that the challenge of keeping students focused during school hours has become even more difficult, what can educators do to ensure their students aren't updating their Facebook page during class time or chatting with friends via an instant messaging service during a lecture?

Perhaps not surprisingly, the answer to helping students avoid the distractions technology create is ... technology. Many educational institutions have some sort of firewall or security gateway to protect their network from malicious content. However, few realize that these products can also help enforce Internet usage guidelines and eliminate the potential for students to be distracted. One such functionality that can help reduce distractions is content filtering technologies.

These tools allow educational institutions to block access to websites that are distracting to the educational processes. This means when a teacher brings students to a computer lab for a lesson they can be confident the students aren't spending the time on Facebook, checking their personal email or chatting with friends online. Higher end security products don't require educators or school network administrators to block each distracting site individually. Instead they can block types of sites such as "social networking sites" "instant messaging programs" or even "game sites" keeping students focused on the lesson or assignment.

Content filtering tools have the added bonus of protecting students and the school's network from inappropriate or malicious content - even when the visiting of these sites is accidental. Almost anyone who has done an Internet search has experienced clicking on inappropriate materials inadvertently and then being shocked when the content was displayed. In this case, even a student who is aware and respectful of the school's Internet usage policy wouldn't be protected from this unsuitable content as they did not intentionally access the website. The potential for accidentally accessing inappropriate sites is magnified the younger a student conducting a search is - as is the potential for parental complaints or even lawsuits. Blocking sites that students should not have access to or that have known malicious content prevents students from even accidently viewing content they should not see.

It is often the case that students are more Internet savvy than most of their teachers. They have grown up with technology and they can figure out most programs almost intuitively. Because of this, some students are aware of programs that circumvent content filtering tools. Again, the more sophisticated tools are aware of these programs and block them as well. But what if students, with their deep understanding of technology, are able to somehow access a distracting website when they should be paying attention to their teachers? Content filtering technologies that are implemented as part of an information security solution also provide reporting tools so that administrators are made aware of attempts to access these sites. This allows administrators to immediately enforce their Internet usage policy and reiterate the policy to students who attempt to distract themselves from their lessons. Sometimes, the types of sites that can create distractions for students can provide educators with valuable teaching tools.

A great example of this is YouTube. YouTube is home to videos about dogs on skateboards and music videos, content that can be very distracting to students. However, it is also home to some educational content. In a history class, for example, a teacher can access clips from documentaries or videos created during a particular time period. These materials can be very engaging for students, elevating their classroom experience. However, students should not have access to YouTube as it is not only distracting when not used appropriately, but it also has content which should not be accessed in schools or by young students in general. To help work around this issue, some content filtering technologies offer educational institutions the ability to set up user groups and filter content according to each groups' needs. So, for example, computers in a computer lab will not have access to YouTube, while teachers' personal classroom computers will. This makes it possible to take advantage of the educational opportunities the Internet presents while continuing to protect students from inappropriate content and keeping them focused on their lessons. The Internet can be a valuable educational tool, but it can also be a great distraction for students.

While content filtering technologies cannot guarantee students will not daydream in class or become distracted in other ways, they can help educators ensure their students aren't focused on web surfing when they should be focused on a lesson, lecture or specific assignment. They also protect students from accidentally accessing websites that are inappropriate for student viewing. Security solutions can do more than just protect your network from viruses; they can keep your students focused.

Section 802 of the Sarbanes -Oxley act requires organization such as financial institutions, government organizations, hospitals and many other types of organizations to archive all records relevant to audits and reviews, including emails, for a period of at least seven years. In fact, not complying with this regulation can result in up to 10 years in prison. As a result, most of organizations have found ways to comply with this regulation even when the information turns out to be embarrassing, as it recently was for Goldman Sachs. Unfortunately, even organizations that intend to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations are sometimes unable to do so. Employees not accustomed to archiving their email messages may fail to do so, and natural disasters can create a situation where archived emails are no longer accessible.

To combat the forgetfulness of employees, organizations elect to deploy solutions that provide automatic archiving, but what can these organizations do to combat a natural disaster? Natural disasters are often referred to as "acts of God" as there is literally nothing any human can do to prevent the disaster. However, there are ways organizations can minimize the impact an event such as a hurricane, tornado, flood, etc. can have on the organization. In the case of complying with email archiving regulations, the answer is hosted or cloud-based archiving services.

Hosted services archive emails "in the cloud" so that the information is accessible even if the datacenter in the office is destroyed. Archiving email in the cloud will not only allow the organization to remain complaint with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations, it will also help the organization begin operating normally sooner. Recovering lost data, including important emails can take time but it is critical to the operation of an organization. When email archiving solutions do not automatically archive emails, messages that employees did not have a chance to archive would then be lost forever. This is why solutions that offer cloud storage and automatic archiving are the best options for organizations. Nothing, in terms of information and messages, will be lost no matter how dramatic the physical damage to the office is.

Email archiving isn't an option so organizations must find ways to comply. By using the same technology intended to facilitate compliance to solve disaster recovery planning, organizations can turn regulatory compliance challenges into an opportunity for increased efficiency.