EXCLUSIVE: Juniper Networks SSG 550 UTM appliance review

The anti-spam measures are designed to act as a first line of defence in front of an existing anti-spam server. The appliance uses Symantec's BrightMail IP-based black lists and you can apply your own black and white lists as well. It inspects SMTP traffic so will only function with an internal mail server and you can ask for suspect spam messages to be tagged in the subject or header or dropped completely.

For anti-virus measures you can request regular signature updates as often as every ten minutes. There's more to play with here as scanning can be applied to web mail, separate policies can be created for FTP, HTTP, IMAP, SMTP and POP3 traffic and you can limit file download and attachment sizes. We tested the latter function and found that emails with oversized attachments were blocked and an advisory note sent to the recipient. General reporting leaves something to be desired as the system log displays a simple table of events although the search facility will provide handy. Counters in tabular format are provided for each interface, traffic flow and security zone and you can also view alarms by policy.

The SSG 550 offers a solid range of network security measures although some areas have a few rough edges. The level of reporting could be a lot better for the price so if you don't want anti-spam then take a closer look at Check Point's UTM-1 appliances (see IT Pro review of UTM-1 1050) as these offer a superior management and monitoring package courtesy of the bundled SmartCenter software. Multiple Juniper appliances can be centrally managed but you'll need to cough up for the optional NetScreen-Security Manager software. Note also that Check Point includes support for SSL VPNs as well as IPsec VPNs. It's also a shame that the user warning pages for viruses and web content filter actions can't be modified to look a lot more sophisticated. The SSG-550 can handle IM and P2P apps but at present it can only block or allow them but we have been advised that v6.0 of Juniper's ScreenOS will provide a more granular control where you could, for example, allow IM apps to run but block file transfers or video sessions.