We used a SonicPoint ACi dual-band 802.11ac access point to test the wireless management features. If you see any suspect activities or apps popping up, you can create a rule to block, monitor or to apply bandwidth restrictions to that particular element. You can monitor app activity by watching the App Flow graphs in the main dashboard. For example, they can be used to log or block various Facebook activities and Exchange address book requests. The advanced app controls, meanwhile, use signature IDs to identify specific activities and provide more granular control of apps.

The rules are quite complex but wizards helped us create inspection policies for SMTP, POP3, FTP and HTTP. Its application controls provide precise management of activities such as web browsing, file transfers and messaging. You can also apply acceptable-use policies (AUPs) by redirecting users to a consent web page. CFS provides more than 60 URL categories, and you can create multiple filtering policies to be applied to different port zones.Įach policy can be customised with blacklists, whitelists and use schedules to determine when they're active. We found CFS to be perfectly adequate, with very few dodgy websites slipping past in our tests. There are two options for web-content filtering: you can use CFS or pay extra for the Websense Enterprise hosted service. It uses a single, global configuration through which you can activate scanning on HTTP, FTP, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, CIFS and TCP streams. The latter makes the TZ300 very versatile we could place selected ports in different zones and quickly apply a single security policy to all members.Īntivirus scanning is applied at the gateway and can be enabled on selected zones. Installation took five minutes in our tests, as the web console's quick-start wizard set up the first LAN port as well as the WAN port for internet access, and applied a base security policy to the default zone.

Wireless management is enabled as standard, allowing the TZ300 to handle up to eight SonicPoint APs. A year's subscription costs 172, and a further 78 will buy you a licence for the Analyzer reporting tool. Unlike many of its rivals, anti-spam is a bolt-on option. This enables round-the-clock support, IPS, gateway antivirus, anti-spyware and a content-filtering service (CFS). Prices start at 400 excluding VAT for the appliance alone, rising to only 648 with a one-year TotalSecure subscription.

Sonicwall tz300