Need of ISA Server (Reverse Proxy) for ASP.NET application

Question

Our company has its own servers for our asp.net applications (ASP.NET 2.0 applications with WCF services) with an ISA Server as Reverse Proxy and Firewall in front of it. We want to run the asp.net applications on external servers at hosting companies (in germany). There are several hosting companies, but we couldn't find one with ISA Server as Reverse Proxy and Firewall.

The web applications (with SQL Server) contains sensitive data (like medical patient data) and needs a high security environment.

Nevertheless is an ISA Server essential for such web applications? And if yes, is there any alternative? We tried a hoster with apache as Reverse proxy but had several problems. Which disadvantages could raise without a reverse proxy and external firewall (belonging security and performance )?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This obviously depends on how confidential and secure you wish the web site to be.

From the sounds of things, I would say you should be using ISA Server, or the next version which is called Threat Management Gateway.

To host this, all you need is a provider who can offer hosting of entire machines or virtual machines (managed hosting). I would be quite surprised if there aren't dozens of these companies in Germany. Any of these providers should be able to install TMG on a server, configure it correctly, and host your websites behind it.

For example: http://www.rackspace-hosting.de/managed-hosting/hosting-solutions/dedicated-servers/