Monitoring
In addition to the Dashboard, the appliance provides a broad set of monitoring features. After you set policies that log mail actions, you can use either FTP or the secure copy command (scp—http://www.openssh.com) to export those logs, either as Internet-style log files or as comma-separated value (CSV) files, to a host. You can also specify events that trigger alerts. However, those events are limited to health reports for the IronMail services running on the appliance—you can't get notification of quarantined virus messages, for example. You can get alert notifications through email, pager, or SNMP traps.
I wish CipherTrust had integrated its product with the Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) standards instead of generating only text-format files. And because the IronMail line isn't based on Windows, you can't specify a program to run when a certain condition occurs.
Imperfect but Impressive
When I heard about the IronMail line of products, I was skeptical that an integrated appliance would be a better security solution than selecting individual products. Concentrating security services in one device would probably make them easier to manage, but I thought I'd prefer the flexibility to mix and match multiple services. However, I was impressed with the ease of management that the IronMail's software offers. All the features share a clean, discoverable interface, and because the IronMail is Web-based, I could manage the device while I was on the road. I was also impressed by the appliance's broad range of functionality, particularly by the capability and flexibility of the policy and antispam features.
Nevertheless, this product isn't perfect. The spam filters are sometimes overzealous, and the relaying problem I encountered could have been prevented with the addition of a simple "Are you sure?" confirmation dialog box. The documentation is skimpy (although CipherTrust is revamping it and preparing a line of online and classroom training courses). And when I went to the support site, I couldn't find any support resources that didn't require a support package (I suspect most customers will choose the annual maintenance package, however).
But when you factor in the cost of individual security packages, servers to run them on, maintenance, and management, the IronMail becomes attractive. If you need enterprise-strength security, monitoring, and antispam features, the IronMail products are well worth investigating. For smaller organizations, even the basic feature set, which doesn't include the optional policy and antispam modules, will probably be worthwhile.
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