Data Security | News

Barracuda Upgrades Spam & Virus Firewall

• By David Nagel
• 10/31/11

Barracuda Networks has released an upgrade to its Spam & Virus Firewall virtual and hardware-based appliances. The new version 5.1 update extends antivirus support to Microsoft Exchange environments and incorporates a range of other enhancements.

With the 5.1 firmware update, the Spam & Virus Firewall has added a Microsoft Exchange Anti-Virus Agent, which allows organizations to protect internal e-mails using the appliance's virus definitions. The agent runs as a Windows service on the Exchange server to scan for viruses in internal e-mails.

The new version also includes an add-on for Microsoft Outlook that enables an "Encrypt Message" button in the Outlook mail client. With the button, users can mark a message for encryption by the Spam & Virus Firewall.

Other new features include:

• IPv6 support for sending and receiving mail, applying policies to the contents of a message, and bridging between IPv4 and IPv6 networks (but not for reputation, DNS, or other layer 3 checks);
• Support for branding encryption notifications, including custom subject and text, on a per-domain level;
• A new feature called Sender Based Rate Control, which is designed to prevent high-volume spam from being sent from compromised internal systems;
• Improved integration with Barracuda Control Center management application; and
• Various UI and performance improvements.

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall version 5.1 firmware update is available now. Complete hardware systems run $699 to $89,999, plus annual subscriptions. Virtual appliances support Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle VirtualBox, and VMware environments. Additional details can be found on Barracuda's site.