Submitted by Brian Doherty (bdoherty @ sas.upenn.edu)
Vendor
ActiveState, Inc. This company produces various widely used tools and utilities
for perl (win32 perl distribution; perl IDEs, etc), python and tcl.
PureMessage is the new name for the product that had previously been called
PerlMX. See: http://www.activestate.com.
Platform (Wintel, *nix, both)
Runs on *nix platforms only.
From their website, supported platforms include:
===
Linux on x86 (RedHat 6.0 or later, or Debian 2.1 or later)
Solaris on sparc (2.6 or later)
HP-UX on PA_RISC1.1 (11.0 or later)
FreeBSD on x86 (4.1-RELEASE or later)
AIX on RISC (4.3.3 or later)
PureMessage provides interoperability with any corporate email system.
In addition to native support for sendmail, PureMessage acts as an email
gateway and can be deployed for use with any existing MTA.
===
Support for Postfix is supposed to be available by 7/1/03. Those using other
non-*nix e-mail servers could set up a separate box on which to run PureMessage
in gateway mode.
Freeware/shareware/paid product
Commercial product (albeit with open source foundation); per cpu and per-user
pricing available. Consult vendor for more pricing information.
How does it function? (Does it rely on external blacklists a la ORDB,
manually-created black/grey/whitelists, MTA blocking, keyword filtering,
etc.)
PureMessage incorporates a large number of approaches to identifying SPAM,
including: pattern matching, spam definitions, real time blackhole lists,
whitelists, and heuristic analysis.
Identification techniques are updated regularly and provided as part of
annual subscription package. See:
http://www.activestate.com/Products/PureMessage/spampack.plex
for more details.
Can also be used to scan messages for viruses.
What is its administrative model? (Centrally administered with Opt-in/Opt-out
functionality, fully end-user-administered, etc.)
Product is server-based and centrally administered (with some delegation
of admin possible via web console). Can opt users out, but currently little
else can be done to customize application of rules on behalf of partcular
users and users would have no direct control. This area is being developed
and version 4.0 (recently released) increases the level of user-specific
customization possible. If used just to tag messages, client side filtering
can be used to determine what action is to be taken thereby allowing users
to customize as they like.
What options does it provide for disposition of SPAM, once it's been
identified? (Deletion, pre-pending "SPAM!" to the subject line,
generating an NDR, etc.)
Messages can be assigned a spam probability value and actions taken by
the system (discard, tag via header rewrite, quarantine, forward or redirect).
Ease of administration, server-side. (Installation, sysadmin maintenance,
system resources required, etc.)
No direct experience to date with installation configuration. Does have
web based console for configuration, but can also be done via command line
or scripts. Data provided by vendor of test results from another university
show very good performance vs that of open source product spamassassin.
ActiveState reports having worked to optimize pattern matching routines
and to have developed components in C for speed.
Ease of use, end-user-side. (Ease of configuration, "learning"
to recognize SPAM, etc.)
Currently, user would not really interact with the system to configure
or "teach" it.
Effectiveness (false positives, misses, etc.) - use this section to provide
any quantitative data you may have, IE, flagged 85 out of 100 SPAM messages
in the course of a week with 5 fase positives, etc.
No direct data. Vendor of course claims very high efficacy. Reports from
some other universities appear to support these claims.
Vendor-provided documentation, tutorials and technical support
No direct data yet available in this area.
Community support available: "Billy-Bob's Procmail Page",
etc. Provide URL's where applicable.
N/A?
Overall impressions & notes
Overall impression is that this is a high-quality product from a very reputable
vendor who has a real committment to the educational market. While open
source approaches would be cheaper in direct costs, it would seem that use
of this product could actually be much more cost-effective. Less hardware
might be needed to run the filtering software effectively and overall efficacy
and ease of admin seem likely to be better with this product.
Other universities have adopted it and report very postive results, see:
http://www.activestate.com/Products/PureMessage/education.plex
Which includes links to information regarding adoption of the product at
the following
Stanford
University
of Washington
Cornell
including case studies from some of these institions. Vendor has also provided
other documents related to use at these and other higher ed institutions.
Contcat Brian Doherty for access to these reports or links.
Product can also be used for antivirus filtering. Being able to use
one product for both of these functions could be very beneficial.
 |
Please note: This material is no longer current and appears
online for archival purposes only.
Use the search and navigation tools above to locate more up-to-date materials, if they exist. |
