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  Trend InterScan Secures Top Virus-Protection Spot April 5, 1999 Command Software Systems m@ilCOMMAND M@ilCOMMAND is a no-frills antivirus gateway. It's a good middle-of-the-road product with solid user configuration and logging capabilities. Its log files were the most detailed we saw, covering server, operations and error levels. The logs are rich in content and can be easily parsed for automated processing or precise gathering of statistics. If your taste runs to leaner logs, m@ilCOMMAND lets you configure brief, normal, verbose or debug-level logging. M@ilCOMMAND's strength lies in its mail-handling routines. For all configuration needs, m@ilCOMMAND uses its Internet Mail Services (IMS) console. This addition to the system control panel handles much of the necessary mail processing and helps m@ilCOMMAND integrate with almost any system. IMS tackles routing and aliases, and creates virtual domains for e-mail delivery. Using IMS, we were able to start and stop the mail services and customize log features. Using the F-PROT Professional scan engine to detect viruses, m@ilCOMMAND scored well in our tests. All infected files are placed in a quarantine area for processing by an administrator. We deleted, sent or copied the files elsewhere via the manager. In our tests, m@ilCOMMAND successfully detected all viruses sent from the WildList. It recognized several compressed file formats, and detected encoded messages in the body of a message, which VirusWall couldn't manage. Unfortunately, m@ilCOMMAND didn't recognize several HTML, VBScript- and Java-based viruses. The generally strong virus-detection capabilities within m@ilCOMMAND are offset by its inability to clean infected files. If you need to repair quarantined files you'll have to buy a separate virus-cleaning package. M@ilCOMMAND adheres to the all-or-nothing strategy regarding attachments. One infected attachment leads to the quarantine of all others. We found this a bit surprising given m@ilCOMMAND's ability to parse mail headers. M@ilCOMMAND lacks a Web interface for remote management and instead enables remote management via Windows networking. We were able to use any Windows95, 98 or NT client on the same local subnet to run the m@ilCOMMAND Manager application remotely. This interface allowed us the same functions as local management except for archiving the log files and copying from the quarantine areas. M@ilCOMMAND is the only product we tested that does not offer some sort of pattern update as part of the design. Instead, m@ilCOMMAND required us to log into a Web page to download packaged updates. Given the frequency of pattern updates, an automated system should be mandatory. Without a manual update of the pattern files, m@ilCOMMAND failed to recognize the happy99.exe virus. Overall, m@ilCOMMAND's interface wasn't as appealing as that of VirusWall and Norton AntiVirus. M@ilCOMMAND encourages the use of scripted configuration files for working with the software, which we found a bit tedious. A GUI control panel is included, but the other products we tested were easier to use. M@ilCOMMAND's robust logging features, strong mail-handling configuration and excellent virus detection make it a solid choice for those eager to get down to the technical details associated with virus scanning.
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