Review: Clearswift MIMEsweeper Email Appliance

For:Easy to plug into the environment and start filtering right away. Against: High cost of ownership. Verdict: An easy-to-use product that is priced a bit on the high side.

We found this product to be a pumped up email data leakage prevention device with solid email protection. The content filter can filter out email, which contains profanity and inappropriate content, sensitive and confidential data and malware, such as viruses, worms and trojans.

The tool was quite simple to deploy and manage. The installation took just a few minutes and was guided by an intuitive setup wizard. Once this installation was complete, we just pointed the mail server to send mail to the appliance and we were up and running.

The web-based GUI is simple to navigate and we found that several pre-defined policies left little extra configuration needed.

This product performed quite well during our tests and it plugged into the environment easily with no trouble. The pre-defined policies were comprehensive and contained a good set of rules to jumpstart the initial filtering.

The addition of a data leakage prevention policy in the way of expressions, such as credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and customisable expressions, makes this a well-rounded appliance.

It can not only stop threats and inappropriate content, but also keep sensitive information from leaving the enterprise.

Documentation included a getting started guide and an evaluation guide. Both include diagrams and screen shots.

Customers can purchase a support contract which gives access to unrestricted telephone and email support, software updates, anti-virus updates and real-time spam update.

With a price of just over US$25,000 for 500 users, this appliance may seem quite pricey. However, it does have solid features, which combine not only virus, spyware and spam protection, but also provide a comprehensive and granular set of compliance policies. We find this product to be a good value for the money.

applianceclearswiftemailmimesweepersecurity