MIMEsweeper is designed to check email flowing in and out of an organization against a list of different parameters, such as virus, spam and any defined corporate policies. It has been around for many years now, and version 5.2 continues the pedigree.
We installed the product on our test Windows 2000 server (the product also supports Windows Server 2003).
This version would be best suited sitting on a dedicated server between the mail server and the internet. Once the application is up and running, and talking to the mail server, the next stage is to look at setting policies.
This involves not just deciding what types of attachments or curse words you want MIMEsweeper to block, it is also about from which domains you are happy to accept email.
And this works the other way, too – it might not be appropriate to send mail to certain recipients either.
The policy manager within the product is easy to configure. Configuring policies is extremely granular, extending down to the group and user levels. Specifying which content can be allowed and disallowed was also easy to do.
The console has the standard management console-type interface, with options nested in individual folders and keys.
The reporting within MIMEsweeper is of a good standard, and can either be recorded in an internal database or in an external SQL 2000 or Oracle 9 database.
We were able to gather data from the reports, such as top threats, top format types or top classifications, to name a few.
The documentation that comes on the installation disc is very good, detailed and clearly laid out. It goes through the different types of infrastructure within which the application can be deployed.
On the whole, MIMEsweeper for SMTP is worthy of consideration by any enterprise, although organizations that are running Domino or Exchange servers might want to consider using the vendor’s other dedicated products instead.