Exchange + Spamfilter

J

JAW

Gawd
Joined
Feb 8, 2004
Messages
518
I am looking for a spam filter for a win2k exchange2k server. Server provides exchange email for about 35 clients. I'd like to filter/stop spam on the server side instead of on each client.
 
There are several options out there. I'm using GFI Mail Essentials on mine. This is a Win2k Server w/ Exchange Server 2k, and it handles mail for about 80 people. Make sure you have plenty of processing power on whatever you choose, the spam filters can eat quite a bit of processor. I'm using a Dual P3 1GHz w/ 1.5GB ram, and it's getting by, but nowhere near ideal.
 
What AV suite do you run on Exchange 2K? Trend Micro has a spam filter...it's not wonderful but eliminates a goodly portion of the garbage. Also, enabling dns verification (verifying that the mail actually came from a real domain) also cuts out a lot of crap right off of the bat, though it can also introduce issues.
 
One other...Brightmail is fantastic for spam elimination. Nothing is perfect, however.
 
Caffeinated said:
One other...Brightmail is fantastic for spam elimination. Nothing is perfect, however.
Click to expand...

Brightmail is way out of the budget of a small place though. Anything less than 10,000 people it doesn't make much sense.

There was a thread last week on this same issue. You may want to do a search and read what was said in there as well.
 
Since you already use Norton products, maybe you can get this on the cheap

Symantec Anti Spam Solution

I can't vouch for it, since I've not used it, but it is usually a good idea to stick within a product line when you are dealing with Exchange.
 
sandmanx said:
Brightmail is way out of the budget of a small place though. Anything less than 10,000 people it doesn't make much sense.

There was a thread last week on this same issue. You may want to do a search and read what was said in there as well.
Click to expand...

I know, but I mentioned it because it does rock. I managed a 20,000+ enduser system on Excange 5.5 then on Exchange 2K. You can't imagine how much garbage we got per day. About 30% of all mail is spam.
 
We use Sophos Puremessage here, but not the spam filtering capabilities.
 
If you've got a spare box and you're ok with running Linux, you could do what I do and run MailScanner and have it accept mail for your domain and forward it to your Exchange server. I use it with Spamassassin and some rulesets from here and the spam never even touches my Exchange server. You can add antivirus software to it too, but I'm doing that on the Exchange box.
 
Caffeinated said:
I know, but I mentioned it because it does rock. I managed a 20,000+ enduser system on Excange 5.5 then on Exchange 2K. You can't imagine how much garbage we got per day. About 30% of all mail is spam.
Click to expand...

I can only imagine. My small server gets about 90% spam. 80 email boxes and about 3000 spam emails per day. It quadrupled in the past year alone.
 
We use a Barracuda Spamwall, Its a dedicated machine that does nothing else except filter not only Spam but virsuses as well. Of course, these things are 2 to 3 grand a pop also and go up from there.
 
IceWind said:
We use a Barracuda Spamwall, Its a dedicated machine that does nothing else except filter not only Spam but virsuses as well. Of course, these things are 2 to 3 grand a pop also and go up from there.
Click to expand...

As stated in other threads, the Barracuda is the best way to go for most situations. The other benefit is that the SPAM processing is moved away from your email server and onto the dedicated device. The Barracuda also does virus scanning, again moving that function off your email server. I would recommend that you still have the virus scanning software on the server as a failover.

You can easily get into the device for around $2K. It will pay for itself within days.
 
Visit http://www.vamsoft.com and spend $200 on the Open Relay Filter (somewhat of a misnomer).

It sits in front of your SMTP and can use multiple spam blacklists (like SpamHaus, SpamCop, etc), you own custom black & white lists by IP, recipient, send and Active Directory.

Very easy to set up, and very effective. Stats on the one I run where I work shows 70-80% of all mail headed our way is tossed as spam.

Note: we have AV scanning on our Exchange server. It was seeing a lot of viruses. Once we put ORF in place and started blocking the known spam, the Exchange AV scanner now catches a virus maybe once every 2 days or so. Dramatic difference.
 
i am currently using ihatespam server edition, but have a barracuda on the way. the IHS product was good enough for $600 when i bought it last year. it eliminates a lot of spam. but there is still too much getting through and it is a fairly dumb system. just uses downloaded definitions and custom white and black lists and custom rules. i don't have all day to dick around with custom rules so that's not much use.

about a month and half ago the vendor emailed me saying that the company that they bought the spam definitions from for IHS was purchased by microsoft and would no longer release definitions. they were working on a solution. i have not received updated defs since then. so i bought a barracuda. you can get the 300 model for under $2K.
 
JAW said:
Intelligent Message Filter
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...7b-8caf-4147-b074-8c9c8f277071&displaylang=en
Click to expand...

I installed this a week or so ago at my wife's office, and it works pretty good considering it's free. I have it set to archive anything with a 4 or higher, and that gets most of it. Out of the 500 or so spams it's blocked, 2 might have been legit emails. It lets through about 5 spams a day(out of a total of 50 spams).

I've been looking at SpamAssassin and how to integrate it into exchange 2003, so I'm probably going to try that this week.
 
...but before I'd spend $2K on a Barracuda, you should still try the $200 ORF product.

Yes, it's just spam filtering, but most of your viruses are coming on that spam. Turn on a few blacklists and AD integration and watch your spam disappear.

Note: I don't work for Vamsoft, but I haven't found a cheaper, more effective product to kill spam with Exchange 2K/2K3.

Hell, you can even do a free trial before you buy it. Install it, configure it and run it for a week or two. Then remove it and see if anyone notices.
 
I am one who prefers to run a SMTP relay at the gateway... spam & virus duties etc.
But, you do have some open source options that might fit the bill..

1. FreeBSD or Linux box as a smtp relay with SpamAsassin
http://spamassassin.apache.org
This is a really popular and well supported app...

2. Fluffy the SMTP Guard Dog
http://smtpfilter.sourceforge.net
Named after Hagrid's three headed dog from the Harry Potter stories..
anywho.. it works as a relay or will deploy on the Exchange server. WinNetMag/WindowsITPro Mag reviewed it and liked it.

I think the Microsoft Intelligent Messaging filter only works with Exchange 2003?
One of the latest issues of PCMag just did a review of several spam/virus/junk dedicated appliances.
 
j4zzee said:
I think the Microsoft Intelligent Messaging filter only works with Exchange 2003?
Click to expand...

Yep. Sometimes the ratings it gives don't make sense. I've seen almost identical emails come in and get completely different scores. One will get a 9, the other will get a 1. Makes it hard to set up when the scores vary by that much.

So, I just spent a couple of hours and got SpamAssassin configured to run instead. I followed the instructions here to install:
http://www.openhandhome.com/howtosa300.html

And used this SMTP sink to send incoming mail through SpamAssassin first:
http://www.christopherlewis.com/ExchangeSpamAssassin.htm

I'm just doing a bit of tweaking now, but it seems like its working great. I've got it configured to just drop spam completely, instead of having the users set up an Outlook rule to filter it.
 
i set up fluffy based on that win net mag article and i had some serious problems. i don't recall the exact error, but the program would crash every so often which would stop all mail coming in. i would have to say that it's a hell of a product for something that's free and i would jump back on it if future updates make it more reliable. but for me it did not work at the time.

also, as i understand it barracudas are just running some form of *nix with spamassassin. they're tweaked, but that's the basic setup.

j4zzee said:
I am one who prefers to run a SMTP relay at the gateway... spam & virus duties etc.
But, you do have some open source options that might fit the bill..

1. FreeBSD or Linux box as a smtp relay with SpamAsassin
http://spamassassin.apache.org
This is a really popular and well supported app...

2. Fluffy the SMTP Guard Dog
http://smtpfilter.sourceforge.net
Named after Hagrid's three headed dog from the Harry Potter stories..
anywho.. it works as a relay or will deploy on the Exchange server. WinNetMag/WindowsITPro Mag reviewed it and liked it.

I think the Microsoft Intelligent Messaging filter only works with Exchange 2003?
One of the latest issues of PCMag just did a review of several spam/virus/junk dedicated appliances.
Click to expand...
 
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