Enterprise Exchange Server SPAM blocker??

[mlakrid]

Hey guys,

Im helping the system administrator locate an email spam blocker for our enterprise that actually works...

Long story short, we have used EZ armor for almost a year now, and well, it just makes a large suction noise, I wish it would simply dissappear.

We are now in the hunt for an enterprise solution, and it does not matter if it is free or not, so long as it works...

We also do not care if it is actually installed on the Exchange server or on the individual workstations, so long as it will merge with our existing baselines.

ANyone have any ideas, or use anything besdies EZ armor??

Please provide links if you got them...

Thanks!

Mike A!
Tampa, FL

 

[madmatt]

I purchased eSafe for my company. Works extremely well. I would say at least 96% of the spam is stopped. Very configurable. Offers spam protection, virus/worm/trojan/etc. protection, incoming and outgoing filtering, and more.

It also offers HTTP and FTP filtering but I don't use that.

Other than that, Symantec's BrightMail is supposed to work really well.

 

[mlakrid]

Do you remember what that cost by chance?
Im trying to get a rough order of magnitude for several different options, and then all the admins and our Regional Manager will sit down and choose the option which suits us best.

 

[madmatt]

I will look it up tomorrow when I am at my office. I'll let you know.

It's important to know that this is a "gateway" type product that should be setup on a stand alone server. It scrubs the email then passes it onto the Exchange server.

 

[fitz]

GFI MailEssentials has nice Bayesian based filtering.

Open Relay Filter and XWall can do grey listing if you can live with a delay in getting email delievered to your end users..

BrightMail was a very good a couple years ago - they might still be very good. Haven't looked at them since Symantec bought them about 2 years ago

 

[mlakrid]

Thanks guys, I will look at all of these, and look for some more.


Mike A!

 

[madmatt]

I can't tell you how much I originally paid (can't find the paperwork).

Last year's renewal cost $1440.00 for 50 users (that includes the anvanced antispam module).

 

[NetRyder]

Month-old thread resurrection, but I just set up an Exchange 2003 server for our personal domain a couple of weeks ago, and I've been really pleased with it.

How has your experience been with IMF in SP2 for spam filtering? I've had it enabled for two weeks now, and it seems to be doing a pretty solid job so far. I started off at a threshold level of 8 for the "Archive" option and level 5 for the move to junk mail folder option. I've moved it down to level 6 for archiving since then, because I haven't seen any false positives in the archives so far. Only five or six junk mail messages in total have made it into any of the users' inboxes in two weeks, which I thought was pretty impressive.

I'm also considering testing out ORFilter to do RBL-based filtering.
http://martijnjongen.com/Default.aspx?tabid=27

 

[madmatt]

Sadly I haven't installed SP2 yet on my servers. I am running two servers in a clustered config. Microsoft hasn't released instructions for installing SP2 for Exchange Servers in a cluster. I have sent requests but I have heard nothing.

Although there are instructions for SP1 I am hesitant to follow them.

 

[LordOfLA]

At coreix we found the best solution was 2 BSD servers with postfix filteriong mail before it got as far as Exchange. Exchange then relays mail via one of the two bsd servers to be filtered before being sent on its way. It also gives us the ability to siphon mail off to other machines to be dealt with by specialst linux applications for oour various internal tasks.

Exchange should never be directly exposed to the internet.

 

[NetRyder]

Exchange should never be directly exposed to the internet.

Why is that, Mark? Isn't Small Business Server 2003 designed to run standalone at the perimeter of the network?
Exchange 2003 seems to have a pretty solid security track record too, from what I've seen. Secunia, for example, lists 6 total advisories for it since 2004, with only 1 unpatched one that's labeled "Not Critical."

 

[kcnychief]

Month-old thread resurrection, but I just set up an Exchange 2003 server for our personal domain a couple of weeks ago, and I've been really pleased with it.

What domain do you run Kunal?

A bit off topic, but I'm curious

 

[NetRyder]

What domain do you run Kunal?

A bit off topic, but I'm curious

I meant our personal domain name. It's the same one that points to my blog. The site(s) themselves are hosted for me by 1and1, but I've switched the primary MX record for the domain to point to our own SBS box running Exchange.

I also admin a Server 2003 box along with a FreeBSD server on the campus network for a student group that I'm part of, so this isn't my first Windows-based server. It is the first time I'm managing Exchange though.

 

[kcnychief]

Sounds cool, I maintain about 6 seperate servers that run Enterprise Edition, but I haven't worked much with Exchange