Clearswift Web Appliance ENW review

During testing we found the ENW delivered a very impressive performance even with just the default policy applied. We searched Google for online bingo sites and gave up after attempts to access the first 60 sites were all blocked. Attempts to access other games and gambling sites met with equal resistance and social networking sites were handled as efficiently with access to the likes of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter all denied.

We could create policies to allow access to a selection of these sites, possibly during lunch breaks and only for specific users. Another useful addition is a URL classification tool where you enter the web address and the appliance will tell you which category it falls under. We did find during testing that effective control of IM apps such as Windows Live will require additional firewall rules to be configured and P2P apps are out of the equation.

The Report Center offers a good range of predefined reports which can be customised to suit. We could see the most popular sites, those generating the most traffic, who was visiting them, what spyware activity was occurring and so on and all can be exported to PDF or CSV formats. This has also been improved to allow reports on specific policy routes to be created.

We were impressed when we last looked at Clearswift’s web filtering appliance and this latest version delivers a number of important updates. Its category database is now one of the largest and the policy based access controls see enough improvements to make it highly suited to an extensive range of business requirements.