Sunbelt Software's Ninja Blade is a Dell-based appliance that is deployed at the corporate gateway and provides E-mail security for organizations. The appliance is initially available in four scaled flavors, supporting organizations of from 500 to 5,000 users. The Ninja Blade combines the technology of several 3rd party vendors to provide anti-spam, anti-virus, attachment filtering, and more for the organization.

For hardware, the vendor leveraged the Dell PowerEdge server family for the appliance. The vendor notes that the appliances are backed by a year of on-site service with a "... guaranteed turnaround of four hours in most geographic locations." Additional (and separately priced) maintenance plans are available.

For software, the Ninja Blade relies not on open source offerings, but instead combines multiple commercial E-mail security products; including BitDefender for anti-virus, and Cloudmark for the signature-based detection of spam, phishing, and E-mail spoofing threats. The appliance's E-mail engine is the MessageSystems MTA, which the vendor says is "... capable of handling millions of unique messages per hour."

The product is capable of scanning both inbound and outbound E-mail messages, and is managed via a Web browser interface. Other security-related capabilities in addition to the anti-spam and anti-virus features include:

- Attachment filtering, which is based on multiple, administrator-selectable pre-defined lists with increasing levels of attachment file types for blocking, or custom administrator definitions. Attachment types are determined both by the extension and the file header info of the attachment itself

- Built-in disclaimers for outbound E-mail (text or HTML formats supported)

- Support for real-time integration with LDAP and Microsoft A/D

- The ability to create filtering rules based on message properties including body, sender IP, header, or subject; as well as support for the definition of custom rules

- Pre-defined reporting that can be viewed through the Web interface or scheduled and sent via E-mail, including such metrics as messages scanned, spam or virus identifications, filters activated, etc. by system, component, or user.

The Ninja Blade is available now in four versions: 500, 1000, 2500, and 5000; the numbers represent the number of users supported. The 1000 and 5000 models also ship with redundant drives and power supplies. Pricing starts at $1,995; annual maintenance and support costs (which include automatic signature updates for anti-spam/anti-virus) start at $599 for the 500 model.

Contact Sunbelt Software for further information.