Best Anti-Spam for Exchange?

[rhyno2k]

Hi,


We've been using GFI MailEssentials (and MailSecurity) for over 3 years now, and it's been... okay. But the product is really losing its spam-catching mojo lately, with no real answers from the vendor, and we need a professional-grade solution that really works.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a small business (<50 employees) running Exchange 2003, soon to be Exchange 2007 SP1 on a Windows AD domain?

I've been looking into the Barracuda Spam Firewall. Hardware/software, doesn't matter as long as it works...


Thanks.

 

[58sniper]

You could go to a third party hosted services such as Postini, AppRiver, MXLogic, etc....

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference

 

[akalinowski]

http://www.trimmail.com/

i use it, i like it. i block smtp inbound and force all smtp traffic to go through this box, it reduces exposure of my exchange box.

sunbelt software makes a program called ihatespam that works very nice, but its been about 6 years since i've ran that on a live server and it doesn't work as an email firewall.

akalinowski

http://www.nofear.com

MCSE 2000, A+, N+, LCP, CNE

 

[Rdy2Taxi]

I have been using Spam Soap at my company for about a year, very happy with its filtering performance and the management features. I have a single Exchange server that supports about 60 users.

 

[rspiess]

The current Sunbelt software package is called Ninja. It works pretty good and is easy to administer. The product will also work as an anti-virus as well.

 

[bphlat]

Try configuring your SCL ratings in your Instant Messaging Filter (IMF) to 7 and then check "Delete" when blocking messages greater or equal to a rating of 7 . That will cut down most spam. Worked for me.

I am also using Juniper Firewall SG5 and it has a black and white list that's easily configurable. The SG5 is fairly inexpensive and built specifically for business under 100 people.

 

[mofusjtf]

I use a combination of products. I use the IMF from Exchange and set the SCL to 6. It works great. I also force Outlook to High since the IMF works in conjunction with the IMF. Finally, I use Trend Micro ScanMail for Exchange. Scan Mail has a great feature set for spam, anti-virus, attachments, content filtering on mail, etc. This combination works great for me.

I have also used Postini and it does work good once you get it setup.

There is another product I have used called XWALL that has a lot of options and is very flexible in its configuration and feature set.

 

[rjs]

Postini - it is sooooo much better, easier and less costly then doing this internally. Our mail gateway before Postini was handling about 300,000 messages per day. Since Postini, that is less then 20,000. The load on the gateway, exchange and our firewall is dramatically reduced.

R.Sobelman

http://www.tracklogins.com

 

[58sniper]

I'm not much of a fan of Postini - WAY too many false positives.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference

 

[rjs]

We've had virtually none in over a year.

R.Sobelman

http://www.tracklogins.com

 

[rhyno2k]

Thanks everyone for your input on this. Lots of leads to research.

 

[zbnet]

To reinforce Pat's opening comment (about using a third party service), Paul Robichaux recently wrote a great article making this case:

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99186/is-self-hosted-antispam-obsolete.html

 

[rjs]

The other added benefit for a hosted solution (not mentioned in Paul's article), is spooling. When our Exchange server goes down (either on purpose or not) or our Internet connection has a problem, inbound mail is automatically spooled at Postini, then delivered when we come back on-line.

R.Sobelman

http://www.tracklogins.com

 

[ShackDaddy]

About a year ago I stopped using local anti-spam solutions (except for IMF here and there) and moved completely to MXLogic. As rjs mentioned, the ability to spool your mail and have remote access to it if a company T1 is down is invaluable. I spend almost no time "maintaining" my anti-spam solutions anymore. 95% of the time, when I log into the MXLogic console, it's to set up a new domain for a new client, since even user creation is automatic.

And because the cost is per mailbox/month, it's still cost-effective to put even a domain with four users into the system.

Beyond that, several of my clients require archiving for compliance, and for one 60-user office, they generated 65gb of archived mail in a year (AFTER spam filtering), so the ability to put those backup/storage concerns in someone elses hands is convenient, and that means I don't have to figure out how to keep those archives both online and backed up on local resources.

The growing set of offerings that the hosted anti-spam solutions can sell is getting more and more tempting: anti-spam, mail continuity, compliance archiving, etc.

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting

 

[paulm22]

Using MX-Logic here and at my last employer and several company's I consulted at and no real problems over all well liked company to work with.

Anyone have a recommendation beside ScanMail for Exchange 8.0. We use AVG 8.0 on the desktop and it does all the ant-plishing and web stuff and I don't want a mailserver doing the same activity with Outlook. Anyone using Antigen?

 

[58sniper]

We've had virtually none in over a year.

You're lucky. I see it catch probably 5 a day - for one mailbox.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference