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McAfees Secure Web Gateway 3300 provided the most comprehensive protection and most flexible management and reporting options of the three gateway anti-spyware products eWEEK Labs reviewed. But these niceties will come at a steep cost.
Click here to read the full review of McAfees Secure Web Gateway 3300.
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McAfees Secure Web Gateway 3300 provided the most comprehensive protection and most flexible management and reporting options of the three gateway anti-spyware products eWEEK Labs reviewed. But these niceties will come at a steep cost.
We reviewed McAfees lower-end appliance—the SWG 3300—which includes dual Intel Xeon 2.8GHz processors, 4GB of RAM, two Gigabit Ethernet ports and redundant power supplies. The next model up, the SWG 3400, is essentially the same hardware plus an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) accelerator for faster performance.
We were disappointed that the SWG 3300 did not offer hardware bypass in case of failure (as the Mi5 appliance does), but McAfee does offer options for clustering multiple SWG appliances for high availability and increased throughput—something neither of the other products we reviewed currently offers.
The SWG 3300s price dwarfs that of the competitors. The hardware alone costs $12,995 (albeit for much more horsepower than the other products we reviewed offer); a perpetual anti-virus/anti-spyware license for 1,000 clients costs $10,090. The optional Web filtering module costs an additional $13,250 per year for 1,000 clients.
We installed the SWG 3300 in transparent bridging mode behind our firewall. The appliance may also be configured as a router or in proxy mode, the latter using ICAP (Internet Content Adaptation Protocol) to tie the appliance in with existing proxy servers.
The SWG 3300 easily surpassed the other products in our detection tests, identifying every previously infected host on the network plus every attempted malware download, except the New.net layered service provider.
The SWG 3300 also performed admirably on download attempts from an unknown Web server and threats downloaded via FTP.
Administrators can choose to manage the appliance either through the embedded Web interface or by using McAfees ePolicy Orchestrator, depending on the number of appliances or McAfee software installations that need to be managed. The SWG 3300 provides a wide range of policy configuration options—more than we saw in the other products we tested.
Next page: Evaluation Shortlist: Related Products.
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Evaluation Shortlist
Blue Coat Systems ProxySG Leverages Blue Coats caching technology plus third-party Web filtering solutions for spyware defense (www.bluecoat.com)
FaceTimes Real-Time Guardian 500 A solid anti-spyware solution, although lacking in fine-grained management capabilities; look for integrated gateway and desktop functionality and management soon (www. facetime.com)
McAfees Secure Web Gateway 3300 Excellent spyware and virus detection at the gateway but at a relatively high cost (www.mcafee.com)
Mi5s Enterprise Spygate 005 Purpose-built for spyware defense, Enterprise Spygate 005 is designed for small businesses but shows promise down the road for larger companies (www.mi5networks.com)
SurfControls Web Filter Born from Web filtering technology, SurfControl offers signature-based detection as well (www.surfcontrol.com)
Trend Micros InterScan Web Security Suite Offers both gateway- and desktop-oriented solutions for anti-spyware and anti-virus (www.trendmicro.com)
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