Filters Take a Bite out of SPAM: Page 3 of 19

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Barracuda Networks' Spam Firewall won our Editor's Choice award. The company's appliance design goals closely parallel our ideal criteria for an enterprise-class spam filter--a free product that requires no administration and stops 100 percent of spam with no false positives! Of course, Spam Firewall isn't free, but at $0.90 per user, per year for 1,000 users down to just $0.27 per user, per year for 10,000 users, it comes closer to free than any product we tested. The device requires some administration, though not much because it's an appliance. The Web-based admin interface is responsive, simple to use and as close to "set and forget" as possible. Finally, Spam Firewall did well enough to place fifth in our accuracy test, only 3.3 percent behind the leader, and it includes an exceptional mail-quarantine facility to help ensure that no critical messages are missed.
Debuting in July 2003, Barracuda's appliance is a relative newcomer to the antispam market. The company keeps costs low by using off-the-shelf hardware and a number of open-source applications, including SpamAssassin, running on a hardened Linux kernel. Its in-house developers tie the applications together, provide a unified Web management interface, augment the SpamAssassin engine based on their ongoing experience with a number of large ISPs, and provide a packaged upgrade for the system and application software with a simple one-click download. The technology behind Spam Firewall is nothing new or earthshaking, but it works, it's inexpensive, and Barracuda has added significant value by combining a number of components into a seamless whole.

Barracuda's was one of the easiest products to get running and administer. We simply logged on to the console and ran through a wizard to set initial IP information, then connected to the device through the Web interface to fine-tune the settings for our test. We set spam and virus definitions to update automatically every hour, but this configuration can be changed to suit your needs.