Trend Micro ScanMail for Exchange 2000 is a well-designed, comprehensive antivirus solution, according to Cary Shufelt, systems engineer at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon.

"We did test another vendor's Exchange product for a short period of time for inbound SMTP traffic because of the limitations of the Antivirus API (AVAPI) 1.0, but we took down the product because we found that it didn't stop the Anna Kournikova virus right away," Shufelt said.

He added that he was not impressed with the other vendor's scan engine and virus pattern file updates. "They [the other vendor] sent different virus signature updates and none of them could stop the initial outbreak of Anna Kournikova," he said. "I found that Trend Micro has the best virus signature updates in the industry."

According to Shufelt, in addition to virus-blocking capabilities, one of the most important reasons for choosing Trend Micro ScanMail for Exchange for the university's antivirus needs was the close ties that Oregon State University has with Microsoft.

"The other Exchange 2000 antivirus solution we were testing was not supported by Microsoft and that was a big unknown for us and it was an issue. We didn't want to run something on our servers that could affect them negatively," he said. "We work very closely with Microsoft and deploy Microsoft products as soon as they are made available. Additionally, we found that Trend Micro's products tightly integrate with the Exchange 2000 environment."

Two important reasons for choosing Trend Micro over the competition, Shufelt said, were that Trend Micro was prepared to work closely on the Microsoft development side with Oregon State University and Trend Micro's price was right.

Shufelt also found Trend Micro to be at the forefront in disseminating information to customers during a virus alert, as well as during the quiet times. "I like getting the Weekly Virus Report from Trend Micro, it keeps me apprised of what is prevalent in the virus field and what I need to keep an eye out for."

Trend Micro ScanMail for Exchange 2000 has been protecting Oregon State University servers for more than a year and there have been no problems whatsoever. "We use Trend Micro products because they are reliable and efficient at stopping viruses," Shufelt said. "When the HomePage virus was out, we didn't see it in our network at all. Trend Micro antivirus did its job."

Oregon State University was thrilled to learn that Trend Micro incorporated content filtering capabilities into the next release of ScanMail. Shufelt quickly enrolled the university in the ScanMail version 6.0 with the eManager beta program.

"ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange 2000 with eManager has proven to be a truly indispensable tool for protecting our network against the latest virus outbreaks trying to infiltrate the network," said Shufelt. "Additionally, with its rule-based content filtering capability, the eManager plug-in enables me to easily enforce a consistent enterprise-wide email policy to ensure maximum employee productivity and uptime, as well as message flow in the Exchange 2000 environment."

"A combined antivirus and content filtering solution is an absolute necessity to effectively protect an organization from the new threats that appear almost daily, without neglecting the integrity of the data coming into or leaving the messaging environment," Shufelt concluded.