Introducing the ISA Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000/2003 Deployment Kit – Getting the Most Out of The Firewall for Microsoft Exchange Server

Introducing the ISA Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000/2003 Deployment Kit

By Thomas W Shinder M.D.

Check out the Table of Contents at:

www.tacteam.net/isaserverorg/exchangekit 

Download individual chapters over at:

www.tacteam.net/isaserverorg/exchangekit

Download the entire 32 document kit at:

www.tacteam.net/isaserverorg/exchangekit/ISAEXCHANGEKIT.zip

One of the most common subjects I see on the ISAServer.org Web boards and mailing list is how to use ISA Server firewalls to allow secure remote access to Exchange Server services on the Exchange Server on the internal network. It makes sense that there are a lot of questions on this subject. Creating a secure remote access solution to your Exchange Server using an ISA Server firewall can be a daunting project. There are many steps involved and if you miss an important step or procedure you could open up your servers attack by external intruders.

It’s with this in mind that we put together the ISA Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000/2003 Deployment Kit. This kit was designed with the ISAServer.org community in mind. Over the last two years I made notes regarding the common Exchange Server Publishing questions. The information in the ISA Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000/2003 Deployment Kit provides answers to the most common and most complex configurations.

The ISA Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000/2003 Deployment Kit went through a private alpha and two public beta versions. I want to thank all the private alpha and public beta testers for the helpful and sometime ingenious input! The ISAServer.org community is really top-notch and the expertise of the community members is included in the ISA Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000/2003 Deployment Kit docs. I could never have made them as complete, comprehensive and understandable without their help.

What will you be able to do using the ISA Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000/2003 Deployment Kit documents? Try these on for size:

Allow secure remote access to the Exchange SMTP service

Allow secure remote access to the Exchange POP3 service

Allow secure remote access to the Exchange IMAP4 service

Give external users a complete Outlook MAPI client experience with secure Exchange RPC publishing

Use the new RPC over HTTPS protocol to allow Outlook 2003 clients for MAPI client remote access to the Exchange Server

Publish a highly secure Outlook Web Access site that secures the connection from end to end from the OWA client to the OWA Web site

Use the front-end/back-end Exchange configuration to provide very high security for remote POP3, IMAP4, OWA and RPC over HTTP connections

Configure the Outlook Express, Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2003 email clients to use all protocols, including secure SSL/TLS protocols and RPC over HTTPS

Issue certificates to email client applications so that they can create secure SSL/TLS connections to the Exchange Server services

Use client certificate authentication to create the ultimately secure two-factor authentication scenario

Leverage the ISA Server 2000 Feature Pack 1 delegation of basic authentication feature to protect your OWA site.

And lots more!

There is a wealth of detailed, step by step information on almost all areas of secure Exchange Web and Server Publishing in the ISA Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000/2003 Deployment Kit. Much of the information has never before seen the light of day! These “secrets” reflect many of procedures that I and other ISA Server administrators use to create highly secure remote access connections to the internal network Exchange Server but never published them to the public. This info is included in the kit and now its available to you.

The ISA Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000/2003 Deployment Kit is designed for the administrator who has a basic understanding of ISA Server 2000 and Exchange 2000/2003. You do not need to be the ISA Server or Exchange Server expert. If you have a basic familiarity of how these server applications work, then you’ll be able to use the ISA Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000/2003 Deployment Kit to create a secure remote access solution to your Exchange Server’s services.

The kit includes a total of 32 documents that have extensive links to one another. You can download the Word .doc version of the kit and when you click a link to another one of the kit documents, it will open the Word .doc for that kit document. You won’t need an Internet connection to access all the kit documents. You can also access the kit documents using the Web based content.

Updates to the ISA Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000/2003 Deployment Kit will be done on a regular basis so that it can keep pace with the suggestions and improvements suggested by ISAServer.org members. Plans for future additions to the kit include docs on how to allow secure remote access to the Outlook Mobiel Access (OMA) and Exchange ActiveSync sites. I’ll also include docs on outbound access scenarios so that you have the details on how to access remote Exchange Server services when your clients are behind an ISA Server firewall.

You can find the Table of Contents and a brief explanation for each of the ISA Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000/2003 Deployment Kit documents at www.tacteam.net/isaserverorg/exchangekit In addition, you can download one Word .doc at a time if you don’t want to download the entire kit. This is useful for when the site is busy and the 45 MB kit download is too slow.

Please let me know what I can do to improve and update the kit to meet your needs. Remote Access to Exchange Server services is one of the killer apps of ISA Server 2000 firewalls and one of the reasons why ISA Server 2000 is the smart firewall administrator’s choice for providing secure remote connections to the corporate Exchange Server.

Write to me at [email protected] with your comments, suggestions and enhancements. Thanks! –Tom.