Email is one of the biggest liabilities on a corporate network. Failure to monitor it properly can have serious legal repercussions.

SuperScout Email Filter 3.5 automatically enforces your company's acceptable use policy. The latest release sees big improvements, noticeably with support for internal email via Exchange.Notes is still left out in the cold, but can be supported through the SMTP version of the software.

the software, management was local and very basic. SurfControl has added remote management and made rule management more intuitive. There's a web interface as well, although it can't be used for managing the filtering rules.

The management application is used to drag and drop rule components to create a policy on who the rule applies to, which tools to use to classify the mail, and the response to take.

As with competing software, a lot depends on dictionary-based searches for words that don't fit into company policy. SurfControl provides default dictionaries of obscene, offensive and classified words and phrases.

Each word in the dictionary has an associated score and each email is given a total score for the dodgy words it contains. If the final score exceeds the limit set in the rule, the message is blocked.

LexiMatch technology provides more accurate filtering using Boolean expressions. For example, a rule can be set up to ignore the word 'breast' if it appears near the word 'cancer'.

The software doesn't just have its head buried in a dictionary. A risk filter checks incoming email against a known and regularly updated database of spam messages.

Viruses are dealt with by passing attachments to an external virus scanner. And F4i scanning technology checks for pornography and requires a separate licence key. We've seen the technology in operation, and it is impressive.

The new interface is a huge improvement. Drag-and-drop rules make it a quick task to set up powerful filtering that matches your acceptable use policy.

Price £1,051 for a 50-user license
Contact> SurfControl 01260 296150
www.surfcontrol.com
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