How do I stop certain attachments?

[colners]

We have a group of managers who only need access to Excel and Word files via e-mail. Is there a way of only allowing .xls and .doc files to be received as attachments, and stopping anything else getting through?

Everyone else in the company needs to be able to receive any kind of attachment.

Regards

 

[ticklz]

You said you want to allow only .xls and .doc files to be received as attachments but you also said "Everyone else in the company needs to be able to receive any kind of attachment".

Sounds like a contradiction but with my organisation we use Network Associates' Groupshield for antivirus scanning, and we use the 'On Access' Tab of Groupshield to block specific attachments we dont want on the Exchange Servers.

Dont know if that helps any!

Who's that girl!

 

[ticklz]

PS

And the configuration works globally, by the way.

Who's that girl!

 

[colners]

Sorry if I have confused anyone.

What I mean is that 5 of our staff members should only be able to receive .xls and .doc files while everyone else should be able to receive any kind of attachment.

I hope this clears things up.

 

[cq]

Nothing within Exchange can do this, you'll need third party software.

Pete

 

[ticklz]

The only other thing you could do, which would be drastic, is to put the 5 people on one Exchange Server and use your AntiVirus to specify attachments to be blocked except .xls and .doc. And put the rest of your crew on another Exchange Server with no attachment blocking. Just 5 people on one server could be a bit over the top but hey ....

Who's that girl!

 

[colners]

Thanks for your suggestions. I am now looking at Mailsweeper from Clearswift along with Sophos Anti-Virus to achieve my aim.

Regards,

 

[cq]

Be careful with MailSweeper - my copy doesn't allow rule exceptions to be used in this way (I use the slightly older version 4.2, V4.3 is the current version).

You can set up a rule to allow mails with .DOC or .XLS attachments - but this will deliver the mail if for example it has three attachments, a .XLS a .MOV and a .DAT for example, because Mailsweeper finds the .XLS attachment and matches it to the 'deliver' rule.

What you can do is limit the number of attachments to one and *then* only allow .DOC or .XLS.

Similarly with images - Mailsweeper doesn't distinguish between a .JPG attachment and a JPG embedded within a Word file.

Pete