Lab test: BorderWare Security Platform
BorderWare boasts high accuracy and excellent content management features, but is plagued by false positives and difficult LDAP configuration
The BorderWare Security Platform (v7.1), running on the SP-800 appliance, had the worst false positive performance of any product tested, and by a large margin: nine critical false positives and 171 bulk false positives. Its filtering rate was 96 percent of spam caught, an acceptable number but below the median. To reduce the false positives, you’ll need to count on a training period of several weeks during which users inspect the quarantine carefully and whitelist the senders from whom they want to receive e-mail.
The BorderWare SP-800 is capable in some areas, but difficult to configure. Although LDAP configuration looks organized, it is hard to get right, exacerbated by help examples that are more often misleading than useful. The procedure is extremely clumsy: the initial screens don’t suggest proper syntax, so you have to iron out the query in test mode (where help screens do provide useful info), then edit it again in the initial LDAP setup until it finally works. Further, the LDAP settings are not carried over from one part of LDAP to another; you need to configure five different queries to set up for domain, users, mail, aliases, and so forth. Another annoyance, which can’t be changed, is that the admin interface times out after 30 minutes.
[ Compare spam filtering statistics for the mail security appliances tested. Compare their features. Return to “Test Center guide: Mail security appliances.” See reviews of the appliances from Barracuda, BorderWare, Cisco, Mirapoint, Proofpoint, Secure Computing, Sendio, Symantec, and Tumbleweed. ]
| Test Center Scorecard | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |  |  | |
| 30% | 30% | 20% | 10% | 10% | ||
| Borderware Security Platform 7.1 on SP-800 Appliance | 7 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 8 |
7.9
Good
|
