WatchGuard XCS-770 review

URL filtering was generally very good as with the games and gambling categories blocked in the default policy we only got through to three of the 50 online bingo sites visited. Other gaming sites were equally inaccessible although controlling social networking activities proved to be tricky.

The SurfControl database doesn’t have a specific category for these so we had to use the URL lookup feature on WatchGuard’s website. We had to block multiple categories as Twitter, for example, belongs to the Blogs and Forums category whereas Facebook came under Personals and Dating.

The XCS appliances provide an HTTP/HTTPS proxy for handling webmail and protecting servers such as OWA or Lotus iNotes. They also allow webmail access so you can let users view and manage their own quarantine areas.

WatchGuard offers a lot more data protection features as you can create global block lists for attachments types. Once you’ve uploaded compliance dictionaries you can perform deep content scanning at the policy level where the appliance looks for text and phrase patterns within document types.

Content scanning goes even further as if specific phrases trigger a threshold, you can have the document automatically encrypted. You can also use filters to look for objectionable content in mail and block, reject or quarantine them.

Even stricter attachment controls can be enforced with document fingerprinting. Samples of documents are uploaded to the appliance which calculates a fingerprint for them. Adding a score to each one allows the appliance to decide which category they belong to so you can determine precisely which ones are to be allowed or denied.

Despite its compact dimensions, the XCS-770 delivers an impressive range of content security measures. Its web interface takes a while to get to grips with but the appliance looks good value and overall anti-spam performance can’t be faulted.