A review of Proofpoint's Messaging Security Gateway

This review of Proofpoint's Messaging Security Gateway, courtesy of Information Security, explains the ins and outs of a product that eliminates viruses, spam, spyware and worms before they reach the email server.

Viruses, spam, spyware and worms inflict heavy cleanup costs, loss of productivity, and often force companies to implement multiple layers of protection. Therefore, companies just cannot afford to pile more software on already overburdened servers, workstations and desktops.

Proofpoint's Messaging Security Gateway email security appliance claims to solve these threats by taking care of them before they reach the email server.

Installation/Configuration A

The mid-range P800 we tested runs Proofpoint Protection Server 4.0 on a hardened Linux platform. To get started, simply change the default password and basic network settings so the device can be plugged in to the existing network and be accessed via its secure Web interface.

A quick-start wizard takes you through the setup, where you can configu...

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re the domains and email servers to be protected.

Considering the number of features and settings available, the Web interface is well designed, presenting sections and subsections for easy configuration.

Global policies preventing common attacks are created automatically. More granular policies, including spam rules, can be based on groups or even individual users and their attributes.

Effectiveness B+

The appliance, powered by F-Secure's Anti-Virus engine, handled suspect email well, stopping 94 percent of the spam; only two of 188 quarantined messages were false positives.

The software inspects each message in different ways, from structural analysis to reverse DNS query, and also detects foreign language spam. The antispam engine also learns from the actions taken by users on quarantined mail.

The embedded email firewall protects the network from buffer overruns, directory harvest and other connection-level attacks. Proofpoint also offers an optional module for zero-day viruses.

The compliance module inspects inbound and outbound mail for defined text, numbers or regular expressions, and confidential information, such as patient records and credit card numbers.

This review originally appeared in Information Security.