PineApp's Mail-SeCure appliance line are perimeter deployed appliances that examine both inbound and outbound E-mail traffic (SMTP and POP3) and provide for the organization both anti-virus and anti-spam features. The appliances are offered in four flavors, targeted primarily to the size of the organization, with the smallest entry including a single GigE port and supporting up to 50 users, and the largest entry boasting 4 GigE ports, dual RAID 1 protected disks, and supporting up to 10,000 users (the number of users are recommendations only based on average mail volume; i.e., licensing is not by user and more users could theoretically use a lower end appliance if their overall mail traffic was lower). All but the smallest entry support internal load balancing features, enabling multiple units to be purchased and stacked.

The devices include both anti-spam and anti-virus detection engines, with the vendor noting as a key feature the product's ability to scan messages at the IP, envelope, and content levels such that many messages are rejected at the perimeter before their content is even received. The anti-virus engines are a mix of the vendor's own heuristic-based detection engine as well as three engines from F-Secure (Libra, Orion, and Kaspersky AVP) and the Zero Hour engine from Commtouch. Meanwhile, the anti-spam detection methods feature 11 layers of technology, including such methods as IP-based reputation checks, recurrent pattern detection, and image-based spam detection. Zombie detection is additionally applied to both inbound and outbound traffic (enabling the blocking of spam messages sent from an internal, compromised PC) and features of the anti-spam controls include the ability to block or tag spam messages, set threshold settings, quarantine messages, whitelisting, etc.

Mail-SeCure can optionally operate as a Mail Server of its own, providing Web-based access to E-mail messages. Management of the appliance is through a Web-based GUI, with all but the lowest model supporting the definition of rule sets at the global, group, or individual user level (definitions can be performed manually or through LDAP integration). System updates (software and signatures) is provided automatically via port 80-based connectivity to the vendor's own hosted Info Server.

Other features of the appliance include a "Backscatter" detection mechanism, for the automated detection/blocking of illegitimate bounced messages originally sent from external sources; and an optional Inappropriate Content Control package including the vendor's Image-SeCure detection engine (scans images for embedded virus, spam activity, spoof links or phishing hyperlinks; i.e., attempts to classify "non-pattern" image spam), and support for IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) DB lookups.

New in the latest release of Mail-SeCure is an optional "Anti-Pornography MegaFilter," an extension of the ICC package to include specific recognition algorithms for pornographic and offensive images; multi-LDAP support; and the ability to automatically add E-mail recipients (users to whom someone from within the organization has sent an E-mail) to white lists.

Base pricing for the Mail-SeCure appliance starts at under $2,000. Contact the vendor for optional features and their prices.