Symantec Web Security

Although it offers an email content filtering tool Ñ Mailgear Ñ and a range of anti-virus tools for use with email servers, Symantec only submitted its web content filter, Web Security, for our test. This can be deployed on both Windows NT/2000 and Sun Solaris hosts and used to filter and manage both HTTP and FTP traffic. The chosen platform is configured as a proxy server and changes are required at the client end (to use the Web Security server as a proxy) to reflect this.

Web Security majors on anti-virus scanning, with all the usual features, such as Symantec Navex engine and the Live Update automated update service. These facilities are combined with filtering tools to manage access to web and FTP sites by reference to a categorised, automatically updated URL list, combined with context-sensitive heuristic content scanning.

The anti-virus protection is globally applied while content filtering can be applied on a per user or group basis, with users identified using Windows NT, Ldap or Radius (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service). Access can be blocked by time of day and downloads managed according to file type, but there are no facilities to filter out pop-up windows, Java or ActiveX applets.

The management interface, implemented via a relatively straightforward browser, is not as intuitive as some of the competition. In a large organisation you can arrange for policies to be applied across multiple Web Security gateways by storing the settings in a central Ldap directory so that any change, on any gateway, is automatically replicated to all Web Security systems.

There are alerting and reporting facilities, but the package is a solution for larger enterprises with other tools to manage email and other traffic, and is of most value to those using Symantec security products.

Contact: Symantec 0800 389 7030
www.symantec.com