Lotus Notes Spam filtering......for the AS400?

F1xxer

Weaksauce
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Mar 23, 2006
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Title says it all. I'm looking for a spam filter to put on our Domino server that resides on our AS400. We have about 200 -250 clients we need protection for. I'm going to call my IBM rep tomorrow or Wednesday, but I wanted to see if anyone on here was familiar with any software themselves. I figured they may be less biased than my rep may be.

Thanks.
 
I didn't think anyone would ever run a mail server off of such a beast of a system. I would think your best bet would be some type of 3rd-party hardware spam filter. Not sure if anything is made for the iSeries/AS400. If you do find a spam filter, it will probably cost you A LOT - like most AS400 software.

Just curious.. what kind of system? OS400 version?
 
We've got Domino on Windows here.
Postini.com for external spam filtering, Symantec A/V & Filter for Domino on the Server side. I don't know if that's an option on a as/400.
 
It's an iSeries 520 running v5r3m0.

There really isn't any software available for the as/400 that does filtering as my research has shown. Just the crap that's included with Domino. But it's all explicit rule driven and that's too much to admin. Cialis can be spelled C1alis ci alis ci-alis etc. Everyday it's spelled differently and we don't have the resources to curb that.

I'm new with the company, so I'm not responsible for this mess. :p I would have put it on a Windows box personally.
 
ambit said:
... Postini.com for external spam filtering, ...

Dude, I know this may not help ya much, but if you do go for more of an "external" solution, I do wholly recommend Postini. It really does kick much ass.
 
Nybbles said:
Dude, I know this may not help ya much, but if you do go for more of an "external" solution, I do wholly recommend Postini. It really does kick much ass.
We also went with an external spam service (we used AppRiver at the time). The extrenal pre-filtering worked better than any server-side solution we tried (spam or virus).

External services also act as short-term cache for when your server goes off-line. You can also set your firewall to accept SMTP traffic from the external provider only and just bounce all the spam being thrown at your servers
 
Not a software solution but a Hardware solution.


Ironport

Filters about 1/3rd of the Internet.

Also updates itself in real-time with a Huge Database of other Ironports worldwide to scan for virus', spam, etc etc.
 
Zamboni said:
We also went with an external spam service (we used AppRiver at the time). The extrenal pre-filtering worked better than any server-side solution we tried (spam or virus).

External services also act as short-term cache for when your server goes off-line. You can also set your firewall to accept SMTP traffic from the external provider only and just bounce all the spam being thrown at your servers


I've pretty much given up on finding something that will run on the iSeries. So I'm left with hardware filtering and an external service. I'm weary about the hardware option as we have a bare-bones staff and we're worked to death as it is, and the last thing we need is something more to configure and manage.


Can you guys indulge me and explain how these external filtering services work? I've been in I.T. for a while but have never had the "pleasure" of admining a mail server.


Thanks a lot for the advice!
 
Our company just signed up for "Mail Gaurdian" with Norlight, I think it's an external mail spam/virus service filtering like you are wanting. It isn't actually set-up yet I'm waiting for a call from Norlight but from what the rep told me... Basically I think I just change the DNS MX record for our mail.somecompany.com to point to the Norlight server instead of mine. They filter it, check it for viruses, and then ship it to my mail server all cleaned up. It's nice to because I can setup port 25 to only allow connections from Norlight now for more security. There is supposed to be some kind of admin "dashboard" where you can change the level of protection and blacklist/whitelist addresses, dig out mail that wasn't spam, etc. I'm no expert and I'm new to this spam filtering thing myself and I tried many in-house solutions before deciding it was best to outsource it. Hope this helps.
 
Yeah it does help, thanks. I figured it had something to do with DNS. I signed up for a rep from postini.com to get ahold of me. I'll have him explain the deal then compair prices.

We only have about 200 email clients now, with expected growth to 250 by the end of the year. Our company is pretty large though and the big-wigs are finally getting sick of pen0r enlargement emails, so wrestling the funds from them shouldn't be too hard. :)
 
We use and recommend the Barracuda Networks Appliances for Spam/Virus filtering..

I think the lowest model is rated for 1 million messages a day and 500 users.

http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/products/spam_specs.php

They have per-user quarantine. LDAP Acceleration (Only accepts messages for those people who actually exist on the system).

Pretty cool system.. Fairly cheap too..

Riley
 
F1xxer said:
Can you guys indulge me and explain how these external filtering services work? I've been in I.T. for a while but have never had the "pleasure" of admining a mail server.
As I remember it:

1) Change your MX record so that all email goes to the servicer's IP instead of yours.

2) Servicer filters spam and virus email. What's left is delivered to your email server's IP address. It should be transparant to your users.

3) Servicer has a web page or a report showing all spam trapped, iwth an option to resend legit emails. They may also have a user lists, white listing, volume reports, etc.

4) Set your firewall to block all email traffic except that coming from the servicer. This blocks spam that's being sent to your IP address.

Our servicer had a two-day buffer (5-days if you called). If we lost power or took the server down, they just queued it up until we were back online, so no emails were lost. We paid $70/month for 50 mailboxes, and they stripped about 97% of our incoming emails and saved us the cost of a new mail server. (They've used it for the past two years.)

It's easy to test for a month or two. If you cancel the service, all you do is change your MX record back to the way it was.
 
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