Reminder: Microsoft Reputation Services (MRS) End of Support
As a reminder to anyone out there still using the URL filtering feature of their Forefront TMG 2010 firewall, the Microsoft Reputation Services (MRS) service, which provides URL categorization for TMG, will no longer be supported after December 31, 2015. After this date, Microsoft will cease updating their URL categorization database. In addition, there are no guarantees from Microsoft that the service will be available in any form, so customers still using this service are strongly encouraged to look for alternative solutions.
For many organizations, this means migrating to another platform entirely, which is not a bad idea considering that TMG is nearly six years old now. Alternatively, it is possible to replace TMG’s web filtering component. This can be done on premises by using integrations from various third-party vendors, or by using a cloud-based solution such as Zscaler.
Regardless which path you take, you have just over one month to identify and implement another URL filtering solution. Good luck!
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Richard Hicks' Forefront TMG Blog 
Rich: Do you by chance know what time zone this will be shutdown? For example, will Microsoft shut it down at midnight on December 31, 2015 GMT? Or, perhaps PST?
Hi Mike – I don’t know precisely what time they will shut down the service. They haven’t communicated that to me or anyone at this point, and I don’t anticipate that they will. Implicit in the end of support statement, in addition to the fact that they will no longer update the database, is that they will decommission it completely and permanently at some point in the future. The bottom line is that after December 31, 2015, there should be no expectation that the service will be available in any form.
That said, I’m concerned that you need to know such specific details for when the service will be terminated. Are you planning to continue to use MRS right up until the last second? 😉
Thanks Richard: It’s really nothing more than morbid curiosity. I’ve never experienced a situation in all of my years using Microsoft products where a specific service is being canceled on a specific date. If I were to peer into my crystal ball, I suspect they’ll get to it once everyone is back from vacation on the 4th. Or perhaps, some poor sap will be required to work into the evening on New Year’s Eve and flip the proverbial switch, which would then undoubtedly cause an increase in support calls to the poor support folks on a holiday…
Well, it’s December 31 (8:09 PM PST) and I’m seeing reports that the servers are intermittent for the last 3 hours or so…..
I wonder if there’s a way to keep the feature active but stop it from checking with MS? Ie, just use the user-configured over-rides or something like that….
I don’t think so.