SPAM Filtering/Blocking Solutions

[NathanBWF]

We have an Exchange 2003 Server, and currently use Frontbridge (which was bought out my Microsoft last year, now called MS Exchange Hosted Services) as our only SPAM filtering solution.

Anyway, it's just not cutting it anymore and I'm looking to either add additional filtering services, or replace Frontbridge with something else.

So what are all of you other IT Managers using? I don't really care if it's software or appliance based.

I'm currently looking at:

Symantec Premium AntiSpam

St. Bernard ePrism

Barracuda AntiSpam Appliance

Anyone using any of these? If so, what did you pay, or what are you paying?

Any and all suggestions welcome...

 

[Joemonkey]

Barracuda is pretty sweet, but where I work we use Sonicwall (formerly known as Mailfrontier)

 

[sourceninja]

We use spamassasin.

Our email setup is funkey though, we have one server that gets the mail and checks for spam, that server sends it to anther server for antivirus, and finally that is delivered to our last server that the clients connect to. However we have a huge spam problem here on campus, and spamassasin works about 95%. Plus some simple configs to make sure the senders domain records match the IP's that are sending the mail.

 

[NathanBWF]

Originally posted by: Joemonkey
Barracuda is pretty sweet, but where I work we use Sonicwall (formerly known as Mailfrontier)

Do you know how much $$$ you are paying for that by chance...?

 

[corkyg]

My ISP uses Can-it by Roaring Penguin software, and it is really efficient, and has different mode. I use the"user control" mode and it works well. I start off by putting all foreign domains on the blacklist. That cuts about 75% of all spam. Blocking all Yahoo except for specific senders cuts another 10%.

Canit

 

[DaveSimmons]

We use a database-driven filtering service, www.SpamStopsHere.com

The problem with most blacklist-driven solutions is false positives, because most of the blacklists look at reply-to addresses (99.99% forged now) and the rest usually don't fully parse the (also often forged) Received: trail.

They also blacklist dynamic IP ranges from ISPs even if most of the IPs in the range are innocent.

We can't afford to silently throw away email from our customers, so the blacklists are not safe for us to use. SpamStopsHere looks at the _content_ of the email not the sender, and matches links and phone numbers in it to spammers.

 

[cubby1223]

Barracuda. It costs a lot up front, I think $7k, but it's worth it. My own e-mail address statistics for September, there have been about 80 e-mails passed through as legit and about 1700 e-mails blocked. There have been just 3 false negatives & 2 false positives. That's a 99.7% accurracy. And it learns. The Barracuda is now set to accept those 2 false positives in the future. And it's fully customizable, you don't have to use blacklists if you don't want, and can filter based on just content analysis & virus scans.