This post was written by Tammy Giovanni
SkyRecon’s StormShield endpoint protection solution is remarkably flexible when compared to other centrally managed endpoint protection solutions available today. Customization and complexity go hand-in-hand with SkyRecon’s new StormShield endpoint protection solution. The product can be difficult to set up, but once rolling, SkyRecon’s offering is an impressive security tool. There is no mechanism for issue security alerts via SMS or e-mail. Unrivaled endpoint security policy management and enforcement adds top-notch anti-malware, yet installation, configuration, overall GUI, and help/wizard/support shortcomings force to urge caution.
ContentWatch’s CP 300 security appliance offers very good content filtering, traffic shaping and anti-malware capabilities, as well as excellent reporting. It also integrates with directory services such as LDAP to let businesses enforce Internet usage policy by person. The device includes a hardware bypass so that network traffic continues to pass through it even if it fails. It lacks context-sensitive help—clicking the Help button downloads and opens a PDF of the manual. Other than a few quirks, everything is where you’d expect it to be, the GUI is responsive, and reporting is excellent.
Buffalo offers its MiniStation Pro in two capacities 160GB, and 320GB. Buffalo has placed a small ridge around the edges of 160GB MiniStation Pro, with the intention that you can wrap the cable around the drive and clip it onto the other end of the USB connector. The oblong drive has a plastic top made up for some reason of small squares. In use, the Buffalo proved reliable under Windows XP and Vista and we felt comfortable throwing it in a bag and relying on it to securely and reliably transport our data.
eSoft’s Threatwall 250 appliance offers a reasonable specification and with a price tag of £1,532 for the hardware looks comparatively good value. It can be customised to suit as eSoft offers two ThreatPak software upgrades with each costing a very reasonable £665 per year. The 250 can also function as a full mail server that can handle SMTP, POP3, IMAP and webmail. eSoft supports a number of deployment scenarios although if you want everything including intra-LAN traffic to be scanned you should use the transparent or bridged mode.