Mirapoint RazorGate 100 (Appliances 2004) - Network security product reviews

Product Details

Mirapoint RazorGate 100

This Product Review is in the following Category:
Network security

This Product Review is in the following Sub-category:
Security Appliances

	Version:	3.5
	Vendor:	Mirapoint
	Website:	www.mirapoint.com
	Price:	from £6,850 (for 300 users)
	Date:	8-Nov-04
	Author:	Robert Jaques

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Aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, the RazorGate 100 is a 1U rack-mounted unit that provides a one-stop-shop security solution.

Designed to handle up to 1,500 users, the RazorGate sits at the edge of the network and protects against virus attack, spam mail and malicious hacker attacks.

It is built around an Intel 2.4GHz Xeon processor, with 1GB of SDRAM and a 40GB hard drive.

Powering up the device and pointing a browser at its default IP address begins the simple configuration process. Mirapoint has designed the RazorGate to be as simple to operate as possible, and this becomes evident with configuration and management.

Spam filtering is handled through the company's Full Spectrum technology. It claims to have a 98 percent catch rate, with virtually no false positives. It achieves this through combining heuristic analysis, automatic updates, and blocking on user name or IP address, among other methods.

The customized hardened operating system that RazorGate 100 is built around has no known exploits, the company claims.

As with any product of this type, Mirapoint has concentrated a lot of energy on policy enforcement. Policies can be configured to manage employee email usage and prevent the leak of sensitive data, as well as the more obvious filters for identifying spam. Virus protection also comes as standard.

Wiretap technology allows administrators to keep an eye on what information employees are allowing out of the corporate network, and can be managed without the end-users' knowledge.

Updates are delivered to the unit automatically, removing another common security problem.

One nice addition to the product is its DirectPath technology. This means a sending mail server will only receive an acknowledgement when a message is delivered to its final destination – rather than when received by the RazorGate unit. This is available as an optional extra.

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