Ultimate anti-spam guide: 11 products tested

T&B Editor's choice Editor's Choice: Symantec Brightmail, Network Box, and Iron Port


Contents
Introduction
 BitDefender
 Clearswift
 CA eTrust
 GFI
 IronPort
 MailGuard
 McAfee
 MessageLabs
 NetIQ
 Network Box
 Symantec
 Specifications
 Editor's Choice
 About RMIT
 How we tested
We have split the Editor's Choice into the three separate anti-spam technology categories; software, managed service and appliance. Because there are so many e-mail environments out there, most administrators looking to deploy an anti-spam solution should by now have a fair idea which type of technology would suit their requirements.

Software winner: Symantec Brightmail, for ease of installation, configuration and administration as well as an excellent user interface and detailed -live" graphical reporting it would be hard to surpass these features.

Managed Service winner: Network Box, if security is a concern then Network Box has the bases covered, if availability and redundancy are your preferred choice then a trial of either MailGuard or MessageLabs may be on the cards.

Appliance winner: IronPort, strong security, redundancy and recently developed ease of installation with the new GUI make this appliance the choice in this review. For those with a tighter budget then perhaps one of the McAfee WebShield appliances may be considered and are still very worthy contenders.

Please note that these decisions were not based on accuracy testing. Given the Labs' extensive anti-spam testing experience, when being initially trialled/evaluated we would expect most anti-spam applications to run around 65 percent to 70 percent spam catch accuracy with very low to zero false positives in "default" or "out of the box" configurations.

Then, once given the benefit of being "tuned" or "tweaked" and having localised white and black lists applied they should run at about 85 percent to 92 percent. Remember each e-mail server environment and organisation's requirements are different therefore it would not be fair to try and compare the results based on limited tests and scenarios it's far beyond the scope of this review.

This article was first published in Technology & Business magazine.
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Talkback 3 comments

  1. Where can I buy Symantec Brightmail Anti-Spam v6.01? please Anonymous -- 23/04/05

    Where can I buy Symantec Brightmail Anti-Spam v6.01? please

  2. We trialled both Mailguard & MessageLabs. MessageLabs is seemingly run out of the UK. To make a simple change required talking to someone in the UK, faxing a form to the UK, and waiting for them to be available. Not ideal. Anonymous -- 01/06/05

    We trialled both Mailguard & MessageLabs.

    MessageLabs is seemingly run out of the UK. To make a simple change required talking to someone in the UK, faxing a form to the UK, and waiting for them to be available.

    Not ideal.

    1. RE: MailGuard propaganda posts Anonymous -- 21/02/08

      Geez, i wonder which of the two firms the anonymous poster is aligned to?? MessageLabs have a sydney office, have far a greater number of and far larger australian client base than MailGuard, and have never experienced the service outages that plague MailGuards poorly conceived and architected systems. Ever heard of availability & capacity management?? How bout mis-leading and deceptive conduct, alla "100% uptime" as is claimed in your marketing. Sub 25 seats, where you dont rely that heavily on your email, use MailGuard as they are cheap. > 50 seats, use MessageLabs, or Postini or Microsoft (whom acquired Frontbridge in 2006). You get what you pay for afterall.

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