Review: PGP Universal Gateway Email 2.8

By Nathan Ouellette on Jun 27, 2008 3:03PM

PGP Universal Gateway Email is a soft appliance email security solution offered as an integrated part of the PGP Encryption Platform.

This product encrypts, decrypts and digitally signs all outbound emails without having to install local clients on each host machine.

PGP offers the product by using a soft appliance concept. Organisations have the choice of product installations that match a number of common hardware vendors. We found installation to be very straightforward on our test machine.

Although we did not test specific product integration, the ability to integrate Universal Gateway Email with other PGP and third-party products is impressive. The tool also comes integrated with PGP’s Universal Server, which allows for centralised administration of all PGP enterprise products.

Once installed, the solution performed very well, although we would caution buyers to choose higher-end hardware to help manage the additional load of digital signatures in the enterprise. The administrative interface is very slick.

The centralised, yet granular, policy management – via Universal Server – makes integration into the enterprise easy to accomplish. Encryption and signing internal emails is completely transparent to both parties, with a choice of using S/MIME or OpenPGP. External users without an encryption client can receive messages via a Webmail interface or PGP’s PDF Messenger.

Documentation for this product is contained within informative and comprehensive PDF files, and the PGP website offers a wealth of support information.

Basic 8/5 support is included with the product for the first year. Premium support (24/5) and platinum support (24/7) options are also available. PGP’s website is one of the best in the business.

Subscription pricing starts at US$76/user/year and includes Universal Server for enterprise administration over other PGP products. Although the price is slightly toward the high side, the product is truly enterprise-class and represents a solid value.

For: Transparent to end-users. Utilizes several open standards. Integrates well with other products. Against: None that we found. Verdict: True enterprise-class product. PGP continues to be at the forefront of email security. SC Magazine recognizes the product as this month’s Best Buy.

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