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6 TECHNOLOGY REPORT SUPPLEMENT FROM MailMarshal for Exchange DEVELOPER’S STATEMENT: MailMarshal for Exchange offers a fast, easy-to-use e-mail security solution that ensures a safe and productive working environment by enforcing organizational Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) and protecting against spam and viruses. Manufacturer Contact details Marshal www.marshal.com MailMarshal for Exchange has achieved the Checkmark Standard Certification for Anti-Spam solutions. www.check-mark.com MailMarshal for Exchange is a software solution, and arrived on a single CD with an accompanying printed manual, license agreement and welcome letter. This particular version of MailMarshal, as the name suggests, is a plug-in for Microsoft Exchange, but the company also offers a more generalized version that works with any SMTP mail system. The accompanying printed documentation only covers the installation and configuration of MailMarshal itself, and assumes a preinstalled and pre-configured Exchange server. Installation was a simple enough affair, with the CD version providing a copy of MSDE and patches as well as some of the other prerequisites if they are not already present. The interface itself is split into a MailMarshal Configurator and MailMarshal Console, but there are also some tools available from the start menu for migration and quarantine synchronization. By default MailMarshal quarantines messages that it classifies as spam but it provides a selection of tools that allow for further processing if required. The Configurator allows access to the nuts and bolts of the software, allowing the user to specify everything from additional local domains and spam updates through to attack prevention, by limiting the number of recipients per message. It is also possible to specify user groups and accounts from within this interface, set the location of various system folders, and set policies based upon connections, virus threats, spam, automated responses and so on. The Configurator is loaded through the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), so will be instantly familiar to anyone who has used this for other applications. The other section of the interface is the MailMarshal Console. Also loaded through the MMC, this multicolored affair is less somber than the Configurator, and allows the user to review all the messages that have been intercepted and make decisions about them. This allows a quick oversight of current trends in incoming mail and the colors have been well chosen to represent varying types of mail. The folder structure for problem messages is colorcoded, and all the messages are easy to locate, as each separate folder has subfolders that are named according to date of receipt of the offending message. It is from here that messages can be forwarded or released. The latter is either a straightforward release, or the messages can continue through the processing, or be reprocessed from scratch. The folders are grouped by Archive, Attachment, Awaiting Challenge Response, Junk, Language, Oversize, Policy Breach, Spam, Spoofed, Suspect and Virus, with various sub folders. The spam folders are split by default into Spam, Spam Type: Day Zero, Spam Type: Phish and Spam Type: Pornographic, and it is possible to set the rules so that each type is delivered to the correct folder. This potentially makes it easier for an administrator to decide which messages to discard outright and which to spend some time going through for false positives, based upon a company’s acceptable usage policy. Each message can be brought up for review in a new window and MailMarshal removes any links that it finds within the messages so that they cannot be clicked on accidentally. This is a good feature, as it can conceivably stop an administrator clicking on a seemingly innocent link and downloading malware to a corporate mail server. The use of MailMarshal for Exchange will come naturally to anyone familiar with Windows software. The combination of online help plus the printed manuals make the installation and administration of this plug-in a breeze. THE VERDICT An integrated plug in for Microsoft Exchange that is easy to install and configure, MailMarshal has a convincing engine and wellstructured interface. This solution should definitely be checked out by any company that uses Exchange for its mail services. FEBRUARY 2006 www.westcoastlabs.org
TECHNOLOGY REPORT SUPPLEMENT FROM 7 PineApp Mail-SeCure DEVELOPER’S STATEMENT: PineApp Mail-SeCure appliances offer a complete mail security solution for different sized organizations: ten different anti-spam engines, three antivirus engines, backscatter prevention, denial-of-service protection and mail-bombing resilience. Manufacturer Contact details PineApp Mail SeCure has achieved the Checkmark Standard Certification for Anti-Spam solutions. www.check-mark.com PineApp Ltd www.pineapp.com Mail-SeCure is a 1U short-length lightweight appliance with ten different spam engines operating together with an advanced policy management module to provide users with the ability to manage their own quarantine processes and black and white lists to maintain and improve productivity and reduce overheads. The anti-spam engine combination also includes Sommtouche’s RPD engine for increased effectiveness. Three NICs provide a variety of options for setup, allowing for a demilitarized zone (DMZ) to be enabled. Initial default settings on the Mail-SeCure device require a change of IP address on the client machine to a private network in order for it to function correctly. The interface is then accessed over an SSL-encrypted nonstandard port using a web browser. A default name and password is supplied, and the manual suggests that this is changed immediately upon login. In order to enable all the functionality and perform the appropriate updates, access to the internet through any corporate firewall in place needs to be provided for DNS, HTTP, SMTP and POP3. The remainder of the initial setup proved to be straightforward, as the manual is comprehensive and easy to follow. The only data that needed to be at hand was network settings, mail server settings, and a notification email address for alerts for licensing. Overall the setup was simple and quick; the device can be configured and functioning on a network within ten minutes. The addition of users and groups for policy management is simple, especially as the device was provided with a group already in place for everyone. This means that if the administrator is after a simple set of rules for all recipients with no exceptions, the configuration time becomes even shorter. The interface uses a strong sense of corporate branding with various shades of yellow and orange as the background with a flash of green here and there, and mostly black text. This makes a pleasant change from the more traditional presentations and is not as disconcerting as it might sound. The main login page shows a swathe of important data, from version numbers and license status, through disk usage and network usage, to queue size, and even some hardware statistics, such as CPU temperature. The main options for the interface are laid out down the side, with groupings split into System, Networking, Mail System, Mail Policy, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam, Statistics, Wizards and Help. The subsections within these are all clearly labeled and easy to find. Supplementary information about each of the fields is provided in the manual, which is couched in plain and easy to understand language. Images are provided where necessary to smooth the learning curve. By default, the PineApp device quarantines all messages it regards as spam, thus stopping the user from ever seeing them in their inbox. It is possible, however, to deliver such messages directly through to the users, and if this option is selected, the device inserts a non-editable tag “*****SPAM*****” into the subject header, so that the recipient can be assured that they know exactly how the device has classified the message. It is possible to create an exclusion list containing a list of users whose mail bypasses the spam scanning engines by default. The Mail Policy section also allows for the configuration of rules that are to be triggered on specific extensions for users or groups of users. Rule inheritance makes potentially tricky work simpler. The spam identification methods cover a variety of techniques that can be enabled or disabled by the administrator: a heuristic engine, RBL, lookups against the Commtouch RPD database, and PineApp’s own database of zombie IP addresses. An interesting and unusual feature of the PineApp solution is that the company has the ability to send urgent updates outside of scheduled update times to its devices via the SMTP port. The <strong>report</strong>ing section within the interface gives the ability to look at a variety of logs for timeframes of up to a year. Logs are also exportable as CSV lists, which is useful for archive purposes. THE VERDICT An individually styled interface and a powerful spam engine make this recommended for consideration when shortlisting corporate mail system protection. Easy to use and configure and a useful method of emergency update delivery mean this device has much to offer any company. www.westcoastlabs.org FEBRUARY 2006
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