BorderWare MXtreme Mail Firewall MX-200 (Appliances 2004) - AV/Email/messaging security product reviews

Product Details

BorderWare MXtreme Mail Firewall MX-200

This Product Review is in the following Category:
AV/Email/messaging security

This Product Review is in the following Sub-category:
Email Content Management/Filtering

	Version:	4.0
	Vendor:	BorderWare
	Website:	www.borderware.com
	Price:	£3,950
	Date:	5-Nov-04
	Author:	Robert Jaques

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The MXtreme MX-200 is a hardened appliance designed to provide email security for small businesses or departmental branch offices with up to 250 mail clients by offering a comprehensive range of anti-virus and anti-spam email perimeter security functionality.

Deployed between internal corporate mail servers and the internet, it is designed to protect all SMTP and HTTP traffic. It also provides email encryption and strong authentication, together with content and policy control.

Support for clustering allows the platform to scale so it can accommodate increased throughput demands beyond this level or add support to additional users. This support extends to central cluster management and provides the ability to load-balance devices into highly redundant configurations.

In terms of hardware, the unit is a PC server based on a 2GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with 256MB of memory, 40GB storage and two 10/100 Ethernet connections in a standard 1U rack mountable case.

We tested the latest version of this system, which runs a hardened Unix variant dubbed S-Core as its operating system. The device has been awarded Common Criteria EAL 4+ certification.

The mail firewall can be deployed in a variety of configurations and, typically, will be rolled out either parallel to an existing firewall, on a company's DMZ or within an internal network, where it scans all inbound and outbound mail traffic.

For initial installation, we had to directly connect a monitor, keyboard and mouse to the device to set up the basics, including its network IP address, but subsequent setup is via a browser over SSL.

The MXtreme system features include secure, web-based email providing remote access support of corporate email servers using existing clients including Outlook, Web Access, iNotes, or BorderWare's own BorderPost.

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