Symantec Messaging Gateway Reviews

Symantec provides a layer of protection on the email gateway. It checks for malware, IP,  domain, etc. 

The solution is highly customizable. You can make rules for domains and configure policies for spam or malware. Messaging Gateway is an on-prem solution, so it's useful for companies without a cloud presence. 

The documentation could have more detailed examples of how to use the product in various situations. As more companies shift to the cloud, they could better integrate the on-prem and cloud versions through an on-prem client. 

I have used Symantec Messaging Gateway for many years. 

I rate Messaging Gateway eight out of 10 for stability.

I rate Messaging Gateway eight out of 10 for scalability. 

I rate Symantec support eight out of 10.

Messaging Gateway is priced fairly.

I rate Symantec Messaging Gateway eight out of 10. 

Our primary use case is the protection of email. We are linked to Microsoft Office 365 and all of our emails, inbound or outbound, are processed through Symantec.

The main thing that I appreciate about this product is that the database of spam, malware, and ransomware is very large. The database capabilities are top-notch.

The level of operation is very good.

The cloud-based interface is very user-friendly.

This product would benefit from better integration with Symantec Endpoint Protection. As it is now, these tools work independently and they do not synchronize between themselves. For this reason, the security benefits go down slightly. When things such as email, spam filters, and endpoint protection are synchronized, the security is enhanced.

I have been using the Symantec Messaging Gateway for about one and a half years.

This is a stable product. We receive thousands of emails on a daily basis and it is responsible for filtering those both incoming and outgoing.

Scaling usage is very easy to do. We have 150 users in the company.

The technical support is good and we have no issues with them. There is an additional charge for support but we are satisfied with it, and everything comes with a cost at the end of the day.

This is the only email security product that we have used.

The initial setup is a very easy process. It is step-by-step and not complicated at all. It takes about half an hour to deploy.

Once installed, it is automatically updated so we are always using the latest version.

Our in-house team was responsible for deployment.

A subscription for technical support costs extra.

We continuously compare the performance of this product to others, such as a similar solution by Barracuda Systems. The Symantec solution really stands out in terms of how people rate it.

I highly recommend using the Symantec Messaging Gateway.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The primary use case of the solution is to future inbound and outbound emails, applying content, filtering policies, and power policies. Basically, the content filter is based on the dictionary words, and most of them integrate SMG with DLP to quarantine emails which violates the data protection policies.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the content filtering policies because the solution offers huge options for configuration, such as hardware manipulation, et cetera, and the dictionaries make the work easier.

The solution interface is from 2003 and is outdated. Symantec Messaging Gateway needs to update the interface.

I have been using the solution for six years.

I give the stability of the solution a ten out of ten.

I give the solution a five out of ten for scalability.

The technical support capabilities are good, but the time response is not good.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. I give the initial setup a nine out of ten.

Without counting the deployment time of the appliance, and we only look at the software portion, I believe three hours is sufficient for initial deployment without any advanced policies.

We have seen a return on investment because the solution can avoid a lot of phishing and infections in our environment.

I give the solution a seven out of ten because it is a good solution for email threats, but it is becoming an outdated solution. In the near future, all companies will move their end-spend solutions and their email solutions to the cloud. To maintain an on-premise application in an environment now, I believe is not the best investment.

We require one analyst and one specialist for the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

The solution is becoming outdated because companies are moving towards cloud applications. I believe this solution will become deprecated in the near future because the solution does not integrate with the new COG mail solutions such as Office 365. We can manage the inbound and outbound emails, but we can not have full integration with these solutions.

We use Symantec Messaging Gateway as an anti-spam solution. We have about twenty domains we use it on, plus our email accounts on Office on the cloud, and for our on-premise console, we utilize Symantec Messaging Gateway.

What I like most about Symantec Messaging Gateway is its usability. I also find its interface very friendly. The solution has a very good interface.

What needs to be improved in Symantec Messaging Gateway is its local partner support, as it's not as technical. The support my company gets from the partner isn't good. Vendor support is good, but local partner support isn't. I'm happy with Symantec Messaging Gateway as a solution, but the problem is with its partner support.

To me, Symantec Messaging Gateway is a complete solution, but it can be very difficult to search the web for resolutions to issues or problems you experience from it. If this could be improved or resolved in the next release of Symantec Messaging Gateway, then that would be good.

I've been using Symantec Messaging Gateway for more than ten years.

Symantec Messaging Gateway is a very stable solution.

I don't have information on how scalable Symantec Messaging Gateway is.

Symantec Messaging Gateway had already been implemented when I joined the company, so I'm unable to give information on whether the setup for it was straightforward or complex.

Symantec Messaging Gateway was deployed by two people from the server and database department and three people from the infrastructure department, so a total of five people deployed the solution.

I don't have any information on the licensing cost for Symantec Messaging Gateway.

We're currently evaluating Fortinet because our main firewall is under Fortinet, so we were under the impression that implementing a solution that has the same brand as our current firewall would be easier.

I'm a customer of Symantec Messaging Gateway.

My company has more than one thousand users of Symantec Messaging Gateway, and everyone within the company uses the solution.

My advice to others who plan to use Symantec Messaging Gateway is that it's a very good product, it's very stable, and it's user-friendly, but the only problem is that it doesn't have good partner support here in Bolivia, where I'm located.

My rating for Symantec Messaging Gateway is eight out of ten.

We are a consulting company and this is one of the solutions that we have implemented for our clients.

One of our clients is in the automobile industry and we implemented the entire suite that consisted of email security, network traffic security, and end-user security including the setting of permissions and restrictions. We were managing then entire security landscape for more than 100,000 users.

The feature that I like the best is the fingerprinting concept.

The keyword rules and mapping of the sequence rules are very effective and very good.

In the automobile industry, they have a research and development department where they create a lot of designs for new models. In order to maintain the confidentiality of those designs, we tried to use OCR technology. However, it was not very effective with Symantec. If this solution could manage image control restrictions for OCR-captured images then it would be very helpful.

This solution is not very efficient at discovering unstructured data, which is something that needs to be improved. Unstructured data discovery is something that is being focused on in many areas including the automobile industry, finance, banking, and elsewhere. Both Symantec and McAfee failed in this regard. When the data is structured, Symantec was very efficient because we used to get the data from the business stakeholders and the data could be scanned to map the information. Where it is not available, as is the case with unstructured data, this product fails miserably.

This solution provides good information, but the reporting is not very efficient and needs to be improved. It will provide Excel reports and PDF reports, but it would be great if they supported the concept of Crystal Reports. Alternatively, if they had a dashboard or could showcase reports on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis, it would be very good. In short, we would like a more enhanced reporting capability.

This solution should provide functionality for the classification of email. It should be automated, with a bit of manual intervention. Specifically, before a user can send an email, the solution should make sure that the classification has been set, otherwise, it should not leave the intranet. It will force the users to classify the information and only then will the email be authorized to go through the network.

I have been using Symantec Email Security.cloud for almost two years. 

This product is very stable.

It was easy to scale in both Windows and Linux environments. We did not try Mac devices, but for us, scalability was good.

We have reached out to technical support for a couple of issues, such as when we were trying to implement OCR technology. They did give us solutions, but unfortunately, they were not very effective.

With respect to the inbuilt capabilities, the support is pretty good. However, when trying something new, as expected we encountered some initial failures and they were not able to assist us with these.

We did not use other messaging security software prior to this solution.

It was easy to set up the entire security suite. There were no constraints, which made it an easy installation for us.

The deployment was completed in two phases. We first had a week-long trial run on a small LAN segment to see how efficiently it would work. Once the trial run was successfully completed, it took two weeks for full implementation across the network.

Initially, we sought support from a consultant because we had the entire Symantec security suite, and we were not well versed enough in DLP technology. We needed someone with a certain level of assurance in order to implement the complete solution, which included email security.

We evaluated McAfee and it was also unable to rectify the problem with OCR images.

This is a good solution, but ultimately I would like to see OCR capabilities, mail classification, and unstructured data discovery. If Symantec could incorporate all of this in the DLP solution then I believe it would be the leading product in the DLP market.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I've been using Messaging Gateway for ten years.

Messaging Gateway's advanced malware detection could be improved.

Messaging Gateway is stable.

Messaging Gateway is scalable.

I've had no problems with Symantec's technical support.

The initial setup was easy.

I would recommend Messaging Gateway to other users and rate it nine out of ten.

We primarily use it as an email gateway for security. We use it for blocking spam.

Protect us form spam & virus emails' attack. 

The solution overall is quite good.

The solution is a leader in anti-spam email products.

The performance is great. You can block 99% of spam emails. It's very effective.

The solution runs quite well.

The setup is pretty simple.

The issue with the solution has more to do with China than the product itself. Since it was purchased by Broadcomm, we've found there's been a general slide in terms of the local services we have access to and we are considering replacing them.

In a later release, it would be nice if the messaging gateway supported the cluster feature. We'd really like clustering as an option.

If you have installed the two messaging gateways, you cannot use the high-availability features of the two products. There needs to be higher availability. Other products provide a cluster feature, however, Symantec for the most part does not offer this.

I've been using the solution for about ten years now. It's been a decade.

The solution is very stable. We don't have issues with glitches and there aren't really any bugs. I've never experienced it crash or fail. It's reliable.

We haven't needed to scale it, so I can't speak to the solution's level of scalability. It's not something we've attempted to do.

We have about 80 people in our organization using the product.

I haven't opened a ticket from the technical support for a long time. We haven't really needed the support from assistance, to be honest. I can't really speak to their level of service at this time.

It was ten years ago, and I was at a different organization, however, I do recall that we used Fortigate at that time.

I also currently use Symantec's Mail Security for Exchange. I use that for my emails alongside the Messaging Gateway.

The initial setup isn't complex. It's quite straightforward. I find it quite simple, as I have a decade of experience using it under my belt.

Deployment to my virtual machine only took about 30 minutes.

I hand over the maintenance to another team.

I handled the deployment myself. I have a wealth of experience with the product. I don't feed outside help from consultants or integrators.

If you would like to enable Symantec's Content Encryption, it's considered an extra feature. You need to buy it separately. I personally just have the anti-spam, antivirus and Premium Content Controller. These features are at no additional cost. New users just need to be aware that certain premium features will need to be purchased.

No.

We're just an end-user and customer. We don't have a special business relationship with the company.

I have the solution running on my virtual machine.

The solution is a really good product as far as email security is concerned.

I'd recommend the solution.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Symantec Messaging Gateway has a huge knowledge base about phishing, spamming, spoofing, etc.

It is complicated to integrate the product with QRadar. This particular area needs improvement.

It is a stable platform.

We have three Symantec Messaging Gateway users in our organization. It could be more scalable.

We do not contact them directly. An intermediate corporation contacts the technical support team on our behalf. They have good engineers, but they could respond faster to the queries.

Neutral

The initial setup has medium complexity. It takes six to seven days for installation. However, improvement in the tool might take some more time.

It is easy to maintain and requires three executives to work on it.

It is a good product. I recommend it to others and rate it an eight out of ten.