Junk mail filtering (best practices?)

[ctjohnson]

We're currently running Exchange Server 2000 SP3 in an orgainization with about 500 users. We use Sybari for virus scanning, but currently have no junk mail filtering software.

Any advice on what to get? Even something that caught half our junk mail would be great, we don't need to have every last piece purged. I'm not even sure about where to start looking for this!

 

[punkt71]

Same here. We are running Norton AntiVirus/Filtering for Exchange 2000 and it sucks. I need something that updates nightly with spam email domains and subject titles, among other things. The execs are complaining that 60% of the email they are receiving is spam mail.

 

[ctjohnson]

what about the product at

http://www.nemx.com?

it looks like it has content and spam filtering at the smtp connecter level, which is perfect - - we don't need a new virus product, sybari is great.

thoughts?

 

[jaksen112]

ahhh the junk mail battle rages on, I have still yet to find an acceptable product for this war. what I do for top level execs etc is change their email address period, and make sure they never give out their email on web forms etc. in addition to changing their email address I keep the old one around for a few weeks and have them access it to respond to legit email and inform contacts of the new addy. this has worked well for me several times. 01110000

 

[Billk43]

I've implemented Mailsweeper for SMTP for various clients. Policies can be setup for SPAM filtering, Virus catching and much more. There are a variety of AV products that integrate, I've used Sophos and F-Secure the most. I would give the edge however to F-Secure because of the ease of virus pattern updates.

 

[punkt71]

What do you guys think of services like

http://www.postini.com

?? I was thinking of redirecting current inbound internet email to their servers, then they send it to our exchange 2000 server.

 

[NickA]

we use GFI mail essentials - see

http://www.gfi.com

They have another product GFI mail security with 3 levels of anti-virus scanning, attachment checking etc etc.

both products together make a formidable defence !

 

[Sanjiv123]

We just implemented SurfControl's Email SMTP filter on our Exchange Server. WOW ! what a difference it makes. It stops junk (spam/bad sites etc) and is highly customisable. A bit expensive but in my opinion it is well worth it.

check it out at

http://www.surfcontrol.com

Can do a 30 day free trial too.

Good luck.

 

[mikeyspike]

I have used MailMarshall at different sites.
It has good filtering and reporting capabilities but it does require some administration.
I have also found that if there is an UNDERSCORE or other character in the email address the amount of spam is about 80% less than those with regular alpha-numeric addresses

 

[jdeaner]

We have a surf control email filter at our place. We don't have an SMTP filter on exchange, but that's what we are going to move to in the future. We have it on a separate machine. I have not had good experience with surf control. Even thought we beefed up the "dictionaries", more than 50% of junk email still (all the A$$ and sh*t and other fancy methods of avoiding text filters, re-assembling packets/headers, and etc..) blows through... The only thing tightening the rules for surf control did, was give the email operator more work because he's constantly pushing legit emails through that get stuck. It's also very expensive. Aside of filtering every email coming in (1000's a day) we have no other option until our contract runs out.


-Jason

 

[Davetoo]

I setup Ihatespam on several users systems a few weeks ago, and they say their spam went from 50-75 a day, to next to nothing.

 

[tmckeown]

We also started useing GFI Mail Essential on our Exchange 2K server. The install was completely painless and it works well. It is very easy to setup and tweak. We have not bought it yet (60 day eval.)but I am happy enough with it to buy it.