stop spam in exchange 1

[chrisosullivan]

We are getting more and more spam these days. Is it possible to stop spam in exchange 5.5? Do I need a third-party software? Which ones are good?

 

[Airforce1]

We just installed Praetor (

http://www.cmsconnect.com/Praetor/prMain.htm)

and our Spam has been reduced significantly. It also stops Reverse NDR attacks. Tech support answered the phone within a minute and they were very helpful. They also give you the full product for 21-days to evaluate and full tech support.

 

[DestinysDream]

You don't need 3rd party software as long as you know what you want to block. It can be done in Exchange Administrator and you can block single address person@yahoo.com or everything from yahoo.com. But then again spammers change their email address all of the time and you would spend forever updating this list and it slows down email flow. It is up to you.

If anyone calls and says "I know a little something about computers" just tell them to reformat it.

 

[Marcs41]

check out

http://www.gfi.com

too, free eval

Marc
_{If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
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[nhanley]

I just installed a Barracuda Spam Firewall and it is working great. The nice thing about it is the administration is easy and you can allow users access to it so that they can create their own whitelists and blacklists.

 

[Marcs41]

you really don't want to have your users have access to that! Imagine what stuff they could be adding without any control!

Marc
_{If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC!}
How Do I Get Great Answers To my Tek-Tips Questions? See faq222-2244

 

[Zelandakh]

My users are allowed to drop emails into a public spam folder and I action it as blacklist.

So why do they drop internal emails in there???

<signature for rent>

 

[Marcs41]

You got funny users Zel ;-)

 

[Scully87]

I set up GFI Mailessentials and GFI Mailsecurity in gateway mode. I am completely amazed by this product and would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone looking for a spam/virus protection solution. It's also very price friendly after the eval if you want the full versions.

http://www.gfi.com

to check it out.

Cheers,
Scully

 

[nhanley]

The Barracuda only allows them to create whitelists and blacklists for their email address. The nice thing about that is for example: if one person wants to receive emails from an organization like ASAE but no one else does that one person can allow those emails while everyone else is blocking them. Users do not have any administrative functions when it comes to the firewall. All the changes that they make only affect their account.

 

[ccastanedo]

I installed Surf Control Spam filter. It works pretty well with very few false positives. Only thing that I don't like are the reporting options otherwise a great product.

 

[AKPolarBear]

From this forum, I found and have now installed the Barracuda 300 (with Outlook plugins).

My other spamware solution was from Trend Micro. It was filtering about 3-4k e-mails per day on top of the various blocks I had set up with Exchange 5.5. During this time, an unrelated problem led to the discovery that our MX record was pointing to a second non-existent mail server. This explained why some users were not getting some e-mails that were not being blocked. Once that was corrected, our daily traffic increased to 4-5k per day.

Enter the Barracuda. Easy to set up. I quietly turned it on to the system on 7/2 with no user knowledge so I could test any response from them.

What I found astounding me, even today. We suddenly started seeing 8-10k e-mails per day being filtered. We are now seeing 18-20k per day after the holiday week (spammers take vacations?). My personal spam per day has dropped from 80-100 to 10 or so and is getting even less as the filter learns new spam. Other users have reported similar drops. My time on administrating spam has dropped from several hours per week to about an 1/2 hour per day and that's only because it's fun to check. It will drop to 1/2 hour per week or less after the evaluation is completed.

As of this morning, we will pass the 225k mark of filtered e-mails. Less than 1 percent has passed as good or tagged as possible spam and about half or more of that is actually spam. To date, I have only found 1 e-mail that was good that was marked as spam by the software.

Downside? We are Terminal Server/ Citrix based and the Outlook plugin proved to be difficult to install. It is installed now and working fine but does not install as Barracuda intended. Reporting is a little weak and a few more controls might be nice. On the other hand, this is definitely a set and forget appliance.

I would say that the Barracuda will be a keeper at the end of our evaluation period. I will continue to run our Trend product as additional Virus/Spam filter.

While its obvious that the amount of our incoming e-mail hasn't really changed, it does shows just how much our Exchange Server was filtering out on its own but could never report.

I had no idea we were being inundated by so much junk!