Readers Review Hot Products

Protect Your Messaging Infrastructure
Proofpoint ’s Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway P-Series
The Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway P-Series is an antispam, antivirus, and outbound-content compliance appliance for the messaging infrastructure that's managed through an HTTP Secure (HTTPS) interface. The appliance has all the basic requirements of a messaging gateway, including centralized management and reporting, along with multiple levels of delegation.

There are five actions that can be taken on an email message—continue, reject, retry, discard, route—and you can also add header information, quarantine, delete attachments, and modify the subject of the message. The route action is very useful because it's becoming increasingly important to send encrypted messages to the end user. This action also works well with the Regulatory Compliance and Digital Assets modules, which are optional add-ons that scan messages for nonpublic and company confidential information prior to being sent. These content-filtering capabilities are more robust than what most vendors provide. Instead of simply looking for a Social Security number or credit card number in messages, the appliance can look for a Social Security number and human resource data (e.g., date of birth, date of service). After I create the dictionary of human resource terms, I can create a rule to look for both Social Security numbers and terms in the dictionary, triggering only if both identifiers are found. The Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway also supports Transport Layer Security (TLS) for encrypted SMTP sessions.

I also downloaded Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway Virtual Edition, which not only makes deployment and data center management easier, but also makes lab testing a pleasure. The Virtual Edition is a virtual appliance for VMware's virtualization products, including VMware Player, VMware Workstation, VMware Server, and VMware ESX Server.

Automatically Notify Users About AD Password Expiration
SysOp Tools' Password Reminder Pro for Windows Active Directory
I've been using SysOp Tools' Password Reminder Pro for Windows Active Directory software for some time now and, frankly, it rocks. The software, which automatically notifies users about their expiring AD passwords, is the tool to have and beats all other products and scripts that I've used. The software literally takes five minutes to install and set up—requiring no coding, scripting, or AD mods—and I can test it in a live environment without disrupting users. Before Password Reminder Pro sends an email to users requiring them to change their password, I can completely customize the message using Notepad or any standard HTML editor. We currently use the reminder emails as a self-help portal that links to change-password services and Help desk contacts.

Since installing Password Reminder Pro, our support calls have gone down to virtually zero and through receipt of the friendly password-expiration reminder emails, our users feel a lot more involved. Our remote and local domain account users who normally wouldn't receive an expiring password notice can now receive a notice regardless of their OS, locale, or VPN method. This cuts down on expired password calls to the Help desk, especially late at night from foreign offices. SysOp Tools also has a very responsive support staff and has even built a custom mod to Password Reminder Pro for our company's specific internal security needs—at no cost. The software's auditing console is also nice, and provides a quick report status on all user objects in the domain.

Expand the Storage Capacity of a Virtual Hard Disk
Xtralogic's VHD Utility
I wanted to take an existing Microsoft Virtual PC virtual hard disk (VHD) I was using and increase its maximum storage capacity. I asked about doing this on the Microsoft Virtual PC discussion group and also searched the Internet—all to find out the answer was no. The typical suggestion given was to use a second VHD instead. This seemed to be true whether you had set up your VHD as a fixed size or as an expanding VHD. However, I was eventually lucky enough to discover a utility from Xtralogic that can expand a VHD, named VHD Utility. This utility worked perfectly. It was simple to use and the instructions on how to expand a VHD were clear, concise, and accurate. It only took a few minutes to perform the operation.

I know, from reading quite a few postings on the Microsoft Virtual PC discussion group, that there appears to be a glaring need for such a utility. One posting even commented about how VMware has this ability, whereas Microsoft doesn't. Discussion group members expect Microsoft to publish a free utility, or to at least make increasing the storage capacity of a VHD available in the next version of Microsoft Virtual PC.

Remotely Control Your Systems
DameWare Development's DameWare NT Utilities
Years ago, when I was the sole desktop support person for our firm, I was overwhelmed with having to manage more than 60 workstations in addition to all our servers. I desperately needed a remote-control software utility to help reduce the time I spent going from workstation to workstation troubleshooting problems. Since then, I have taken advantage of DameWare Development's NT Utilities network-management suite and especially its Mini Remote Control feature, which helps me remotely connect to Windows OSs. Mini Remote Control is a small program with a low memory overhead that can be pushed to a client, and the install can be customized so that the push install will automatically stop the service or remove it entirely upon disconnect. The program gives you nearly complete remote control of the system and currently supports Windows XP/2003/2000/NT clients. Even now that we have migrated all our workstations to XP, we find Mini Remote Control to be more flexible and easier to work with than Remote Desktop Connection. Mini Remote Control even supports remote clients with dual monitors. This software helps the lone IT guy work as if he were an entire department of technicians.

My favorite part of DameWare NT Utilities is its cost and licensing scheme, which is $289 per licensed user, not per computer. There are no license limits on how many client agents can be installed and controlled, and you can have it installed on your desktop, laptop, and home computer as long as you're the licensed user using the software.