Perimiter email software

Deathwish · 19 Feb 2009 at 19:02

Hi guys,

Just wondering what other people are using for perimiter email defense, anti-virus, anti-spam, content filtering etc. How good, bad, ugly are the products? We will be looking to implement something for our new Ex2007 setup.

Cheers

oddjob62 · 19 Feb 2009 at 19:28

We outsource it to Messagelabs. Pretty good service, although there are cheaper options who work as well (but i didn't really have a say in the matter)

J1nxy · 19 Feb 2009 at 19:37

Implemented Postini, Websense Hosted Email and Message Labs and they are all near as damnit the same. If you want internal gateways look at an appliance, something like the symantec box or similar

Deathwish · 19 Feb 2009 at 20:08

Yeah we have MessageLabs doing the external bit, we would like a bit more control at our end. Anyone had any experiance of Mimesweeper or GFI MailEssentials?

svbooga · 19 Feb 2009 at 20:10

If you have any Linux experience build your own gateway using MailScanner/SpamAssassin/Postfix. All you need is a spare hardware or put it on a VM.

BruBoy · 19 Feb 2009 at 20:22

Postini - users seem happy with the filtering.

Deathwish · 19 Feb 2009 at 20:29

Just before we all go down the Linux route. We are a Windows house, and I can't change that, not my call

Postini looks nice, i've emailed it to the boss

J1nxy · 19 Feb 2009 at 21:17

Postini BTW is now owned by Google. The linux stuff having suffered it is a pain in the arse and nowhere near as good as the paid for solutions in the market place.

svbooga · 19 Feb 2009 at 22:00

J1nxy said:
Postini BTW is now owned by Google. The linux stuff having suffered it is a pain in the arse and nowhere near as good as the paid for solutions in the market place.

Ive found some of the paid for solutions to be more of a pain in the arse than the linux route, but thats just my experience

Sin_Chase · 19 Feb 2009 at 23:32

Marshal products.

As powerful and as flexible as you like.

morfmedia · 21 Feb 2009 at 19:53

Sin_Chase said:
Marshal products.

As powerful and as flexible as you like.

Yup. This is used by many large companies who run their own mail filtering. Good support too.

slylittlefox · 21 Feb 2009 at 20:56

J1nxy said:
Postini BTW is now owned by Google. The linux stuff having suffered it is a pain in the arse and nowhere near as good as the paid for solutions in the market place.

That's just plain wrong. Linux stuff is not a pain in the arse. Your limited knowledge of said systems are

There's a tool for every job - and for this particular job, there's tools that come in Linux and Windows flavours. We use a mix of SpamAssassin, MS ISA, MessageLabs, Censornet Mailsafe etc throughout various segments of our organisation.

Personally, I'd side with Censornet Mailsafe - http://www.censornet.com/products/mailsafe/ for mail filtering specifically.

s0ck · 21 Feb 2009 at 22:52

Mimecast - with 10 year email retention and internal email synch too via journaling.

cybergeek · 22 Feb 2009 at 11:02

Mailwatch(outsourced)? but they seem to drop a lot of mail which isnt recoverable.

We use Exim(software) to do anti-virus, spam-checking etc and it works much better

teaboy5 · 22 Feb 2009 at 13:41

Take a look at the Ironport products, we have this doing e-mail - scanning e-amils for viruses before they enter and spam flitering.

They are owned by cisco

DustyMiller · 22 Feb 2009 at 17:23

Get a sophos mail appliance (ES Series)

You wont be dissapointed

UK Tech Support all the way. Not that you will need it.

ricky1981 · 22 Feb 2009 at 18:06

DustyMiller said:
Get a sophos mail appliance (ES Series)

You wont be dissapointed

UK Tech Support all the way. Not that you will need it.

Not sure I can agree with that, we've had a load of these out to customers for evaluation that have been swiftly returned to us and my own testing of them hasn't left me all that impressed. That said, they aren't terrible, just not as good as they could/should be.

If you want an appliance then Ironport is the way to go, for software I would go with either Marshal or SpamAssassin. For managed services, if you just want clean email (ie remove spam and viruses) then MessageLabs, Postini/Google, Webroot, Websense/Blackspider will all do a pretty similar job. If you want to go for additional services like archiving, disaster recovery, email branding, etc then Mimecast have a very complete package that is proving very popular.

On a side note, avoid Clearswift at the moment, their software has always been a bit of a nightmare to look after but they are also struggling as a company. They laid off a lot of staff lately and resellers and customers alike are leaving them in droves, shame really as they are one of few UK security companies

Deathwish · 22 Feb 2009 at 18:22

Thanks for all the info guys, appreciated. Will take a look at some of the suggested companies.

Sin_Chase · 22 Feb 2009 at 18:27

Marshal has 30 day evaluation on both their Web and Mail solutions.

No obligation, download and use it on a trail key, fully functional.

http://www.marshal.com/

Ev0 · 22 Feb 2009 at 23:06

We use a mime sweeper appliance and also run through messagelabs, I think.

Have also got an appliance coming in tomorrow from someone but I've totally blanked on who!