Unified Access Gateway was originally developed by a startup company named Whale Communications in Rosh HaAyin, Israel.

Whale's initial product, e-Gap, was designed to create physical separation between networks of disparate trust levels.

The product was originally built to offer sneaker-net services and shortly thereafter features to enable HTTP connections were added.

In the 90's and early 2000's, e-Gap was enhanced to provide comprehensive reverse proxy features that included in-depth filtering of inbound traffic to ensure the security of the web servers and applications it protected.

[1] On 17 December Microsoft have announced that Microsoft will not deliver any future full version releases of Forefront UAG and the product will be removed from price lists on 1 July 2014[11] Microsoft UAG provides secure socket layer (SSL) virtual private network (VPN), a Web application firewall, and endpoint security management (for compliance and security) that enable access control, authorization, and content inspection for a wide variety of line-of-business applications.

[12] Out of the box UAG Server is able to work with many authentication vendors such as Mi-Token, RSA Security, OneSpan, GrIDsure, Swivel, ActivCard and Aladdin.

It also works with numerous authentication systems and protocols such as Active Directory, RADIUS, LDAP, NTLM, Lotus Domino, PKI and TACACS+.

With the current release of UAG with Update 2, the product also offers support for many third-party systems such as Linux, Macintosh and iPhone.

These components can also perform end-point compliance checks before allowing access, to test for attributes on the PC such as domain name, antivirus definitions date or running processes.