Security

If anything was of greater concern to IT managers in 2003 than keeping costs down, it was security. Throughout the year, IT scrambled to thwart viruses and worms, identify and patch vulnerabilities, secure remote access and protect data traveling the Internet, and defend against intrusions and attacks on network resources and applications. And then there was that little annoyance called spam. Naturally, vendors tried to address these problems with all manner of products, and it seems we tested them all, reviewing nearly 70 security solutions in 2003 -- almost one third of our total reviews.

Highlights included two roundups of firewalls and firewall appliances, roundups of enterprise anti-virus gateways and server scanners, a feature and test of identity management solutions, a XML firewall roundup, a feature and two tests of SSL VPN appliances, three tests of vulnerability scanners, and a shoot-out of anti-spam gateways for large networks. Interspersed among all these comparative tests, we did stand-alone reviews of application firewalls, intrusion detection systems, network forensics appliances, patch management tools, and solutions for securing hosts, clients, and storage devices.

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Anti-Spam

Brightmail Anti-Spam Enterprise Edition 5.1
Brightmail
Very Good (8.4)
Cost: Yearly subscription: $1,499 for 50 users; $5,999 for 500; $35,000 for 5,000
Bottom Line: Brightmail's gateway solution includes a spam folder agent for Exchange and IBM/Lotus Domino, allows Outlook users to provide "spam" or "not spam" feedback with a click, and has good reporting. However, administration is relatively inflexible; end-users cannot whitelist senders directly. Nevertheless, Brightmail proved the most accurate in filtering spam (96 percent successful). Excellent support and a large user base mean Brightmail should continue to have high accuracy.

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FrontBridge TrueProtect E-mail Security Suite
FrontBridge
Very Good (8.5)
Cost: yearly subscription is $1,350 for 50 users; $9,000 for 500; $75,000 for 5,000
Bottom Line: The FrontBridge service blocked 90 percent of spam in tests, with few false positives. Adding users is virtually automatic, end-users can easily recover quarantined messages and whitelist senders, and reporting is excellent. However, real-time information is unavailable due to delays of up to six hours. FrontBridge also offers a good array of additional services, including mail policy enforcement and disaster recovery.

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