MailScanner review/comparisons?

[Rick Cooper]

Here is a link : http://www.itsecurity.com/tecsnews/may2003/may188.htm

but the question is what are they actually looking at? As I recall the
etrust software comes as antivirus, firewall or antivirus and firewall. I
assume they are looking at purchasing a device that uses etrust's services.
What device would that be?

Get a list of product features, will it catch malformed HTML, will it allow
you to disarm IFRAMES, scripts, etc. Will it catch a file by type and not
just name, can you use felxable rules to block specific files. List the
assets of MS verses etrust device side by side and then list the associated
costs per annum for each.

Bear in mind if it's a content management device that includes the etrust
software it might also offer things like web proxy, firewall and so on so
you need a feature list of products that the device offers as well as the
etrust features. For instance MailScanner is not going to block unwanted web
downloads, or limit site access where Squid would. If they are buying an
"armor" product then you will be comparing apples to oranges, however a
perimeter device with
MailScanner (SA, Av, etc)
Squid (squidblock lists, and various custom ACLs)
Iptables
Snort
SnortSam
FreeSwan (for Ipsec)
PopTop (For pptp)

Would be at least on par with the etrust products, and the reactive IDS
capabilities of Snort with SnortSam would probably be much tougher than the
average device. (SonicWall, Instagate, etc) The down side, however, is that
a box such as described would require more knowledge than a click and run
solutions such as InstaGate. Webmin would aid greatly but content/security
devices generally have a custom UI that allows the average SA to manage
things they know little about, which is a big selling feature for many a SA.

Rick


> -----Original Message-----
> From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK]On
> Behalf Of Pete
> Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2004 8:18 AM
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: MailScanner review/comparisons?
>
>
> the company i work for has been given to another company - the new
> parent company have this IT dept that is HELL BENT on using every
> Microsoft product around and pretty much hate *nix - which is greaaaat,
> as we all love *nix. They wanna ditch our Domino env and replace with
> exchange = grrr.
>
> I piped up and said, how about checking out our MailScanner server, we
> can easily scan all your mail too - well, they said nah we are getting
> this new fandangled etrust content server which costs some big dollars,
> its the best content scanner available to mankind etc. Fine i said,  i
> will leave it at that.
>
> Next thing i know these guys are all bagging MailScanner to my bosses
> saying it cannot do all this really basic stuff (like stop heaps of
> spam/viruses) - my broses comes to me and say, explain to us how is
> MailScanner better than this commercial product - what are we missing
> out on?
>
> I tried to explain to him that even if we use our own experience only as
> an example, we dont get any email borne viruses, we have trapped xx
> spam, we never get complaints from users about receiving spam etc etc
> But this is not enough to combat the people in powerful positions who
> are pushing their own barrow.
>
> If you have ever seen a review or professional comment on MailScanner i
> would love to hear about it, please post a link, or scanned attachment
> if from a magazine to assist me in building my some form of case against
> these heathens.
>
> Any other suggestions of comments really appreciated.
> thanks
> Pete
>
> --
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>
>