Review: MailScan for SMTP Servers

MailScan can be installed on an existing mail server and is available in over twenty variants to support many third-party Windows-based mail servers. We tested the generic version aimed primarily at non-Windows mail server platforms, MailScan for SMTP Servers.

This version allows you to install on a dedicated gateway machine, an existing proxy-based firewall PC, or an existing mail server (the existing mail server must be running on the Windows platform). MailScan runs on a 32-bit Windows machine, even though the mail server need not be Windows-based if it is on a separate platform. MailScan for SMTP Servers can replace a mail server, (an undocumented feature), as it is on an underlying mail server architecture which supports POP3 mailboxes for mail collection by clients.

It includes a POP3 downloader that enables downloading from your ISP using the POP3 protocol. It supports wildcard account download, so that one account can download emails for an entire domain. The POP3 downloader can be set up to download smaller emails first, delete duplicate emails without downloading them, and download on a schedule.

Confidential data may be protected by custom word search facilities. Attachments may be blocked by filename and wildcards are supported. Specific users may be excluded from such blocking so that they may send and receive prohibited file types. Compressed files are extracted for review. Automatic compression of attachments can be enforced. Large emails may also be automatically ?parked? and sent at a less busy time. Disclaimers can be automatically added to outgoing mail.

Anti-virus is provided by the well-known Kaspersky anti-virus engine, which includes heuristics and searching for virus identities. Anti-spam features support public realtime blackhole lists (RBLs), Dial-up User Lists (DULs), and validation of sender domains. There are custom word lists to identify spam, and new spam phrases are uploaded from MicroWorld when the anti-virus component is updated.

For:

: Doesn't have to be installed on a dedicated machine.

: No Bayesian statistical filtering for anti-spam.

: A good mail content security tool, with a built-in anti-spam engine.