sophos question

[Julian Field]

At 17:49 21/02/2003, you wrote:
>We've already used MailScanner (with great success) for anti-spam filtering
>and are planning to start using it for anti-virus as well (to this point
>we've been doing anti-virus on Exchange with Sybari's Antigen, which we'll
>probably keep doing, but I'd like to shift the bulk of the work over to
>MailScanner).  I'm considering purchasing Sophos for sitewide
>implementation, mainly on the basis of its connection to MailScanner.  Can
>anyone give advice on the features of Sophos in general, i.e. desktop
>performance, auto-updates, centralized management etc.?

It is very much designed for the corporate market, not the home market. You
can set up a central update-server which all the Windows desktops use to
pull all their updates, and automating the updates of the central
update-server is pretty easy to do (our Windows admins have done it, so it
can't be too hard).

Its desktop performance is pretty good, the virus detection engine is
superb (my favourite). The auto-updates can be done as frequently as you
like, and are very straight-forward to do. I believe the centralised
management is okay too.

We have used a site licence for Sophos for 4 or 5 years now, and our
campus-wide Computing Services dept are very happy with it.

>I'm prepared to go with Sophos the whole way (at least for a year), in order
>to get the convenience of its integration with MailScanner and avoid having
>to buy a separate product (Symantec) for server/desktop deployment.

There is a gain to be made from using a different product for your mail
gateway as to the one you use for your desktops. If, for some reason, one
of them fails an update (or the company is slow to react to a particular
virus) then you are protected at 2 levels giving a more robust system.

>   In my
>talks with the Sophos reps, I've mentioned that my main reason for even
>looking at Sophos in the first place was MailScanner.  They seemed pretty
>receptive to that idea and had only good things to say about MailScanner
>(they also mentioned Amavis).  In my opinion they should give some credit
>(or compensation!) to Julian for the increased attention to their software.

They don't even talk to me any more :-(
Bit of a change from the days when they tried to head-hunt me.
--
Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support