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One of the best known content filter providers, Surfcontrol sells three products, Web Filter, Email Filter and Instant Message Filter. All are designed primarily to run on Windows 2000 hosts, but protect a variety of IP-based networks.Web Filter, for example, can be used in several ways, starting with the basic Windows version using packet sniffer technology to minimise the impact on network bandwidth and make for easy setup. The software can also be configured for pass-through filtering and used with Microsoft Proxy Server, ISA Server and Checkpoint Firewall-1.
Configuration and management is done using either a Windows console or a web browser, with a similar interface in each case. This looks a little daunting at first, but was one of the easiest to use of those tested. Surfcontrol uses the same interface to manage its Email Filter, although each requires its own console.
One feature we liked was the ability to start monitoring traffic as soon as the Web Filter software was installed. This makes it easy to see what is happening and better devise rules to manage the traffic. You can build very sophisticated rules, based on the daily updated category list, and apply those rules to individual users and groups. Users can be authenticated using Microsoft Active Directory, Novell NDS and Ldap as well as by host name, IP and Mac addresses.
Access to websites can be blocked and users shown warning messages, with the ability to control access by content scanning as well as URL. A Virtual Control Agent (VCA) uses adaptive neural network technology to categorise new websites on the fly and use them in access rules. Downloads can be managed by Web Filter rules and there are useful bandwidth management controls.
Information logged by Web Filter is stored in an Access database with options to use SQL Server on larger networks. Alerting facilities are also built in and there's a comprehensive reporting module with a large number of customisable reports that can be published, viewed and exported in various formats.
Email Filter comes in two formats, to protect either generic SMTP mail systems or Exchange (v5.5). It can be used on a standalone server or the same system as the main message transfer agent, and is a well-specified filtering tool. It has the same kind of monitoring facilities as on Web Filter to snapshot traffic before devising any rules and a similar Virtual Learning Agent (VLA). In this case, though, it uses the neural network technology to automatically fine tune the software based on the traffic being handled, the only slight drawback being the need to train the VLA to do its job.
The Virtual Image Agent can be set to recognise offensive pictures, and you get a McAfee-powered anti-virus scanner and multilayered anti-spam protection as standard. The Surfcontrol Anti-Spam Agent is the key to this last option, with facilities to filter messages against both public realtime black hole lists and by matching content using Surfcontrol's own database. Suspect material such as active HTML and Java components can be stripped from emails and there are the usual facilities to filter both incoming and outgoing messages and add disclaimers.
Rules can be created using all these and other filtering agents with drag-and-drop actions, and colour coding summarises what rules do. Messages can be blocked or quarantined and notifications dispatched to senders, recipients and their managers based on the content found. You can archive and audit messages and reporting as as well as you can in the Web Filter.
Instant Message Filter can be used to manage a variety of IM and P2P protocols. It can block access to the leading AOL, MSN and Yahoo messaging services and P2P services using Fasttrack or Gnutella networks. It's also very straightforward to implement using a Windows 2000 host with, just like the other Surfcontrol products, comprehensive notification and reporting facilities. On the downside, however, it can only block or allow traffic, with none of the filtering controls found on IMmarshall for instance, but then the NetIQ product only works with MSN.
Contact: Surfcontrol 01260 296 200
www.surfcontrol.com
See also:
Review of Net IQ Webmarshall, Mailmarshall, IMmarshall. 05 Sep 2003
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