SurfControl E-Mail Filter v.4.5.
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This is where if anywhere in the installation you can go wrong. It's possible to set up a continuous loop of mail back to itself, which is something that I managed to do inadvertently in my fervour to get the package running. Thank goodness SurfControl has easily viewed status windows and also an individual control panel that allows you to start and stop each of the three services individually (receive, rules, and send) so it was a simple matter of stopping the send service temporarily while we rerouted the ports correctly.
Once the installation and configuration have been completed you can begin to set up the individual rules that will administer your filter system.
There are no rules set up by the application as default. The rules are extremely powerful, giving control options above and beyond that of traditional offensive spam. The administrator can implement such rules as file size, tracing competitor e-mails both to and from your company, and job search rules. This could be seen by some employees as an invasion of their privacy and rights, however providing they were notified as part of their work policy that their e-mail messages may be tracked based on these types of information, then why shouldn't the user beware? Particularly in this day and age of productivity gains through marginal time and resource cropping.
Overall the package was very well documented, easy to set up and administer, and quite a flexible solution. Again of particular note was the well designed main interface window that shows the administrator the real time flow of traffic through the application. Another feature of interest was the Web interface for monitoring and viewing the application status, allowing system administrators to view the application from wherever they had access to a live Internet browser.
| Product: | SurfControl |
| Price: | AU$59.90 per user |
| Vendor: | SurfControl |
| Phone: | 02 9414 0000 |
| Web: | www.surfcontrol.com |
| Interoperability: |
Windows 2000 only with any SMTP server. |
| Futureproofing: |
½
Fully configurable with full support for future updates. |
| ROI: |
 ½More than double the price of similar products and restricted to yearly licencing. |
| Service: |
Contract for 25 percent of the total cost; is relatively high, but includes both minor and major software upgrades. |
| Rating: |
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