Exchange Spam control question

brendy

brendy

brendy

Soldato
Joined
27 Apr 2007
Posts
3,224
We have three offices, each runs 2003 server ent with exchange. When I joined I inherited the current setup which was filtered by symantec smsme which is getting increasingly infuriating as its not doing what it is supposed to, ive tried black lists, word filters, content rules and spam confidence list settings and it either blocks everything good and bad or lets the flood gates open.
Ive searched on here and messagelabs seems like a decent program but bearing in mind the most exposure to a *.ix based system Ive had, is a week with ubuntu. Im not so sure a unix based setup is the way forward, is there anything that can be installed onto each server (ie windows based) that will significantly cut down the ropey emails coming through and can be configured to allow the good stuff through?
 
We use Sophos PureMessage for our exchange 2003. It aint perfect but it does give you a good degree of control over it.
You can set it up so that at certain times of the day every user receives what's called a 'spam digest' email. This is basically a list of all the suspected spam emails that have arrived since the last digest email and the user is given the option to either have them delivered to their mail box or deleted/quarantined. Thus avoiding losing legit emails to the filters, and the inbox filling up with all sorts of garbage.
Maybe worth looking into.
Hope it helps.
 
Cheers K.Jacko, Ill look into that, are there any products out which have a daily/whenever download which updates the filters automatically?
 
Well yeah, the Sophos anti-virus control centre (SBE) installs on a pc (xp or server) and it deploys the anti-virus (and firewall if you ike) to all clients on the domain and/or workgroup. Its updating schedule is customisable. This also includes updating PureMessage too. Worth looking at the bundle.
 
Our Symantec corp 10.2 is due for renewal this coming month, maybe its worth a gander. (we recently became AVG resellers too so I suppose Ill phone them and ask too!)
 
Use sophos enterprise/puremessage combo here too.

Works pretty well in my experience, but have had the following 2 problems (1 recurring):

1 - Puremessage failed (still dont know why) and caused an ex.2007 server to queue all its outgoing emails, reason not found (uninstall and reinstall solved the problem)

2 - Sophos AV auto-deployment fails regularly - have around 800 PC's, i'd say ive had up to 70-90 machines with msi deployment failed problems
 
Yeah, i have an open case with Sophos right now due to deployments not working for some strange reason, which no one seems to be able to fix.
I suppose they'll all have their glitches, but its been ok for us so far.
 
We've started using icritical (www.icritical.com) for some of our clients (small to medium business), it's a very good managed spam / virus filter which can be pretty well configured by you. I've been uninpressed with most packages recently, free ones like SpamAssassin and McAfee plug ins etc. iCritical just seems to do the job properly.
 
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typo there cliffy but im checking it out now, cheers. What sort of prices are they matey for 20 and 50 user sites? ballpark figures even.
 
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Oops, have edited it now. Works out pretty cheap too i think, last order i did with them was for 30 odd users for around 550 a year. Once it's setup you can just leave it and they manage the updates / blackilsts etc.

EDIT

They have a trial you can register for and setup instantly. Just need to poitn your mx records to the ip's they give you and set it up to forward to your ip. Can check outgoing too if you set it up to smarthosts.
 
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It just gets re-routed and filtered by them and ends up in your exchange organisation like normal.

EDIT

To elaborate:

You set the mx records for your domain to be the 2 IP's they assign (you have 2 virtual servers assigned). Email then gets routed directly to them. You say in the config which domain names you want to accept and then which public IP you want them to be forwarded onto. When it's been scanned, anything that doesn't get auto rejected due to blacklists etc and conforms to the weighting you configure will be forwarded on.
 
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When I was looking for an anti-Spam solution for our Exchange Servers I was drawn towards a product from www.cloudmark.com

I read two wonderful reviews, both said that it was a simple install and forget solution and that in both cases the amount of Spam had been reduced by well over 95%.
In the end we went for a different solution and decided to filter at the gateway, however it might be worth looking into the above.
 
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