The CR1500i delivered a perfect 100 per cent score when classifying mail as definite spam as nothing evaded it during the test and there were no false positives. However, Cyberoam's scoring system for classing mail as probable spam is wildly over-enthusiastic as its false positive rate was over 70 per cent.
This is a chink in Cyberoam's armour as it isn't possible for administrators to fine-tune the spam scoring system. However, we passed our findings on to Cyberoam's engineers and they advised us they were taking corrective action to modify the scoring systems based on the email headers we supplied.
In previous tests on Cyberoam's web content filtering component we've found it be very inefficient. Work has clearly been done to improve this as with the gambling URL category blocked we were denied access to the first 40 online bingo sites visited. With earlier products we had got through to over half of them.
Reporting tools are extensive where you can see who is doing the most browsing and how much bandwidth they're using. Spam and anti-virus reports are detailed and Cyberoam also includes basic compliancy audit trails for PCI, SOX, HIPPA, GLBA and FISMA. Traffic discovery is on the menu where you can see live views of application protocols and those users generating this traffic.
As with its SMB appliances, Cyberoam scores highly for value with the CR1500i. The identity based security and policies make this appliance very versatile and it's also rare for a UTM appliance to perform so well across the board.
Verdict
Compared with many enterprise UTM security appliances, the CR1500i looks good value and it also offers Cyberoam’s unique identity based security.
It’s easy to deploy, performs very well and allows you to create user and group based policies to control just about any type of internet related activity.
Chassis: 2U rack chassis
CPU: 2 x 2GHz E5335 Xeon
Memory: 4GB DDR2
Storage: 1 x 80GB Seagate Barracuda SATA
Network: 12 x Gigabit (10 x copper, 2 x SFP)
Power: 2 x 384W hot-plug supplies
Management: Web browser, CLI
Options: 1yr subscriptions - anti-virus & anti-spam, £3,531; IPS, £1,968; web & application filter, £5,263 (all prices ex VAT)
