Lab test: Mirapoint RazorGate

The Mirapoint RazorGate 160 (v3.8.4-GA) did reasonably well in anti-spam performance, placing fourth in filtering accuracy and seventh in false positives. That's well within useful performance, though admins should count on spending some time building whitelists if they have users who get a lot of bulk e-mail. Compliance and content filtering features were broad and easy to use, with scanning inside archives and the capability to hold encrypted e-mails for inspection if desired.

The RazorGate is a mature product that is generally easy to set up and configure, except for one oddity: there needs to be a DNS entry for the appliance on your internal DNS server. Rather than depending on the IP address in its internal configuration, the RazorGate can only resolve its own address externally. Small organizations that don't have an internal DNS server will want to look elsewhere, but given the fairly high minimum price for this system it's unlikely that small organizations will consider it.

A central console administers all RazorGates in an enterprise; there is no separate login for individual boxes. This feature is typical of the enterprise orientation of this system, which also includes clustering that is easy to set up, good reporting and logging, and management via NDMP (network data management protocol), which is used by BakBone's NetVault, IBM Tivoli, Veritas NetBackup, and others for backups via the network or direct to tape via SCSI. The RazorGate also offers excellent compliance filtering and monitoring, with a "wiretap" feature that allows suspicious mail to be forwarded to a designated person who reviews the mail to ensure compliance with policy. The wiretap feature can also be used to archive all e-mail for a group or domain to an alternative location.

The RazorGate is inexpensive for the full feature set supplied. Although anti-spam performance is not outstanding, it is more than adequate for most organizations, and given the enterprise-class features, the RazorGate is worth a second look.

Return to: Mail security challenge

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