Enterprise Spam Prevention

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dave_borg98

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 29, 2005
Messages
154
I am needing to get some reccommendations on enterprise spam and email virus solutions. I have looked at the Barracuda products and am also looking at Postini. We have about 500 email accounts that need to be blocked. I would like a single device that would do both spam and virus protection.

The other item we are looking for is spyware protection/prevention. Maybe an appliance, not really sure. We have about 50 users that would need the spyware prevention. Thanks for any suggestions that you can give.
 
SurfControl is a web filtering application that also has a spam prevention module. Their anti-spam stuff is supposedly pretty slick. That could help you out with the spyware problem and the spam problem, all in the same software.
 
Boscoh said:
SurfControl is a web filtering application that also has a spam prevention module. Their anti-spam stuff is supposedly pretty slick. That could help you out with the spyware problem and the spam problem, all in the same software.
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Not to argue, but I know many people, including myself, that really do not like SurfControl products.

From my experience, their products are buggy, have memory leaks, take to much processing power, and are very expensive. I have tested a variety of products for spyware protection, anti-spam, anti-virus, etc. SurfControl was always at the bottom of the list of quality products.

Just my 1.5 cents. To each his own.
 
I have a few barracuda's that i've implemented.

I like them a lot, and in my main workplace it directly replaced a qmail/clamav/spamassassin custom build.
 
KaosDG said:
I have a few barracuda's that i've implemented.

I like them a lot, and in my main workplace it directly replaced a qmail/clamav/spamassassin custom build.
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The nice thing about the Barracudas is that they are cheap in comparison to some other applicances.

If you are not keen on building one yourself and want an appliance, that's where I'd start looking. I've worked for companies that don't like "contract" any thing out. With a service (Netriplex), non of the bad stuff ever makes it to your network, which is nice.
 
MorfiusX said:
Not to argue, but I know many people, including myself, that really do not like SurfControl products.

From my experience, their products are buggy, have memory leaks, take to much processing power, and are very expensive. I have tested a variety of products for spyware protection, anti-spam, anti-virus, etc. SurfControl was always at the bottom of the list of quality products.

Just my 1.5 cents. To each his own.
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Hmm. I tested SurfControl for two months in a production environment. While my final conclusion was that I didn't like the product, it was because of the way the rulesets were built and that they didn't allow for enough granularity.

I never experienced memory leaks, lots of CPU usage, or any bugs. SurfControl was $2000 cheaper than Websense. The final total for us came out to $800/yr for 200 users.
 
MorfiusX said:
The nice thing about the Barracudas is that they are cheap in comparison to some other applicances.

If you are not keen on building one yourself and want an appliance, that's where I'd start looking. I've worked for companies that don't like "contract" any thing out. With a service (Netriplex), non of the bad stuff ever makes it to your network, which is nice.
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Manageability was also a key factor in going with the barracuda's. Automated, easy spam/virus/software updates, training the database, etc.

we used to use an external filter, but sometimes they get latent (DDOS was a common "issue" with ours) so we had to look elsewhere.
 
Boscoh said:
Hmm. I tested SurfControl for two months in a production environment. While my final conclusion was that I didn't like the product, it was because of the way the rulesets were built and that they didn't allow for enough granularity.
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I had a ton of problems with their ISA 2004 product. It cut my throughput by more than half. It also had memory leaks where the process would start taking up a ton of RAM.

Like I said, just my 1.5 cents. I also know a guy/company who uses it with out much problem.
 
Here's a bump for Symantec Brightmail.

However, if you looking for more value, its hard to beat the barracuda appliance.
 
I replaced my Barracuda with Swirbo. It is offsite so you dont waste bandwidth and downloading all of the spam emails and then filtering them. They receive all of your mail and then send you the good stuff. It has built in anitvirus as well. If your site goes down they will hold your mail for you until you can get things back up and running. You can let users interact or make it invisible. Barracuda is a very good product but Swirbo is better and for a tiny price difference.
 
I went from a custom Linux/ClamAV/Spamassassin box to a Barracuda. The barracuda is doing more than I was able to do. We use Exchange, and the LDAP lookup drops around 85% of all incomming mail because it wasn't going to go anywhere. Also I was maxing out the processor on the box I was using for my custom linux install.

When I looked at either building the linux box again on a bigger machine vs. the barracuda, it was cheaper to go with the barracuda. It wasn't cheaper by thousands, only a few hundred, but the LDAP or Exchange excellerator was the deciding factor.

I really like the Barracuda. I will say that it does take up around 3 - 6 hours of my week going through the Database to mark spam, and not spam. However prior I was spending 5 - 10 hours working with my custom box to try to clear out spam.
 
ianshot said:
I will say that it does take up around 3 - 6 hours of my week going through the Database to mark spam, and not spam. However prior I was spending 5 - 10 hours working with my custom box to try to clear out spam.
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Wow, i've heard good things about barracuda, but to spend 3 - 6 hours a week on spam?

I have to say, I've probably spent that 6 hours on spam collectively for the past 6 months. I've only had to check it twice for false positives. Granted, Brightmail costs a bitch and a half, but still...

How much time do the rest of you spend with your solution?
 
We have a barracuda appliance where I work. I do all the administraion and and maintenance to the network. I have barracuda setup to block known spam, emails that are obvious spam, and to quarantine emails that "look" like spam. All the quarantined emails get emailed to me. I scan over the emails and say yes or no to wheather or not it's spam and my selections train the database. We have 100 email boxes and I spend roughly 2 to 6 minutes a day on SPAM.

Also barracuda has a SPAM reporting tool that integrates into Outlook. I works very much like spambayes and is as simple to use. If its spam click the red envelope button if it's good legit email click the green envelope button. That trains the appliance too and is dead simple for our users to use. It cuts down on my administration time in the process too.

Overall I really like the solution. We went from a custom built sendmail/spamassasin/mailcanner solution to the barracuda. A company called Tangent does a very nice job of providing this as a service. You can use their barracudas to filter your email.
 
I used the Barracuda product for a year and Iw as the onyl person to admin it and I spent maybe 15 minutes a week on it. I think I spent more at first because of the bayesian(sp) filter teaching it what was and wasnt spam. With Swribo I actually left the barracuda in place. Changed my MX records to point to swirbo and had swirbo send my mail to the barracuda. I wanted to test how good this swirbo company that I never heard of was. The setup was easier and faster with the swribo. I did not have to do any "teaching" to the filter. there wasnt a single piece of spam that made it through the swirbo filter that the barracuda picked up. I ran this config for about 3 months and I have 900 email accounts.


I really think the offsite solution is worth the money. The pricing is very close to what you would pay to buy a barracuda and pay the annual support for it. Swirbo's support is very good too, but so was Barracudas.
 
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