We need an enterprise level spam filter

[Kenazo]

We have a small-medium size accounting firm (around 30 users) and we get an ungodly amount of spam. Is there any way to block this crap, firm wide?

We use Exchange 2003.

 

[netsysadmin]

Cheap way:
Add some DNS blacklists to your Exchange Server, such as www.spamhaus.org and check out Microsofts Intellegent Message Filter for Exchange.

More expensive, but better way:
http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/products/spam_overview.php

John

 

[scauffiel]

I run GFI MailEssentials on our domain (60ish users) and it works real well; not too pricey either.

S.

 

[spyordie007]

Depends on what you're after. If you're looking to "just take care of most of it" Exchange 2003 (with SP2) has some fairly decent SPAM filting capabilities, RBLs (as mentioned) and an entry-level filtering engine (Inteligent Message Filtering).

If you're really serious about stopping stuff here are a couple of good enterprise level products, fortunetly costs for most of this stuff are based on the number of users so it shouldnt be too bad in your deployment.

IronPort C10 (Appliance):
http://www.ironport.com/products/ironport_c10.html
Or Clearswift's MIMESweeper for SMTP/Exchange (Software or Appliance):
http://www.clearswift.com/products/msw

I've had some bad Barracuda and GFI experiences, so tend to shy away from them myself.

 

[Joemonkey]

We use SonicWall (Formerly MailFrontier) and it works awesome, integrates with Active Directory and such, supports blacklists, blocking due to attachment file extension, all sorts of cool stuff

 

[nweaver]

we just use open source stuff, and it works pretty good.

 

[alent1234]

XWall

around $500 and a great filter

you can run it on your exchange server or as a smtp gateway

 

[RebateMonger]

You can also have your email pre-screened for viruses and SPAM by services like ExchangeDefender or Postini.

 

[networkman]

Another very happy Barracuda Networks customer here. We've been using their Spam Firewall 300 series box at the enterprise level for nearly a year now and it has drastically cut down the spam, to the tune of thousands of emails per day!

 

[cmetz]

Kenazo, see:

http://www.flakshack.com/anti-spam/wiki/index.php

 

[skyking]

I've done it with something similar to the link posted above, using debian. During the test, it nuked 4000 spam in 6 weeks from 1 mailbox alone, with zero false positives and about 97% spam killed. After looking at all that, I let it drop the junk on the floor and never looked back

 

[SuperNaruto]

Originally posted by: networkman
Another very happy Barracuda Networks customer here. We've been using their Spam Firewall 300 series box at the enterprise level for nearly a year now and it has drastically cut down the spam, to the tune of thousands of emails per day!

I used postini and verisign (microsoft).. i like external screeners.. less traffic hits your network, more bandwidth you have to download legit stuff..

like postini more.. currently on it..

 

[BornStar]

We use MIMESweeper for SMTP from Clearswift and I've been very happy. We use it to filter for virii and attachments as well as spam. I use it on a network of about 70 users but I can't tell you the cost because I really don't know. I'd have to guess that it isn't cheap.

 

[SuperNaruto]

my break out cost is

postini charges around 2.91 per user, per month..

if I need to sit there to check on some guy's spam box, false positives, virus or to update scanning engines, it'll cost me more than 2.91 per hour. so I out source that portion..

paying 3k a year for 100 users is extremely cheap for a large company... I'm assuming things like postini will cost less if you had 10,000 users.

some guy we fired try to put in gfi w/o understanding it.. over night it flagged 10,000 messages as spam... of course that cost more than $3k worth of man hours to move messages back and correct settings... so it really boils down to how much $ you wanna spend fighting this spam crap..

 

[Brazen]

I like TrendMicro's Internet Message Security Suite. We had some users getting hundreds of spam messages a day, and most everyone would get at least 10 a day. After putting in IMSS, people get 1 spam message about every couple days.

You could also look into using spamassassin (free, open source) as an email gateway.

 

[Thor86]

Originally posted by: networkman
Another very happy Barracuda Networks customer here. We've been using their Spam Firewall 300 series box at the enterprise level for nearly a year now and it has drastically cut down the spam, to the tune of thousands of emails per day!

Agreed, nothing to install on your Exchange/Mail servers, and very easy to administrate/tune. Yes, it's pricey, but you get what you pay for, and their support is top notch.

 

[thirdlegstump]

Another vote for Postini.

 

[dphantom]

Originally posted by: SuperNaruto
my break out cost is

postini charges around 2.91 per user, per month..

if I need to sit there to check on some guy's spam box, false positives, virus or to update scanning engines, it'll cost me more than 2.91 per hour. so I out source that portion..

paying 3k a year for 100 users is extremely cheap for a large company... I'm assuming things like postini will cost less if you had 10,000 users.

some guy we fired try to put in gfi w/o understanding it.. over night it flagged 10,000 messages as spam... of course that cost more than $3k worth of man hours to move messages back and correct settings... so it really boils down to how much $ you wanna spend fighting this spam crap..

A vote for Barracuda. One time cost <$2000. Annual subscription updates ~ $800. Admin time (me) < 1 hour per month. Number of users = 260.

Total annual cost per user = (800 + ($50/hr*12))/260 or $5.38 annually per user.

Very cost effective and basically out of mind for me.

 

[Tsaico]

Another vote for GFI Essentials here. The software is pretty easy to set up and confgure and it also can handle different domains too. Good forum for troubleshooting also.

 

[spudstr]

Originally posted by: dphantom

Originally posted by: SuperNaruto
my break out cost is

postini charges around 2.91 per user, per month..

if I need to sit there to check on some guy's spam box, false positives, virus or to update scanning engines, it'll cost me more than 2.91 per hour. so I out source that portion..

paying 3k a year for 100 users is extremely cheap for a large company... I'm assuming things like postini will cost less if you had 10,000 users.

some guy we fired try to put in gfi w/o understanding it.. over night it flagged 10,000 messages as spam... of course that cost more than $3k worth of man hours to move messages back and correct settings... so it really boils down to how much $ you wanna spend fighting this spam crap..

A vote for Barracuda. One time cost <$2000. Annual subscription updates ~ $800. Admin time (me) < 1 hour per month. Number of users = 260.

Total annual cost per user = (800 + ($50/hr*12))/260 or $5.38 annually per user.

Very cost effective and basically out of mind for me.

Barracuda costs mor elike 400/year, MailFoundry is just as good and supports alot more users at a slightly more cost. Serversite we've found symantec anti-spam/brightmail/Premium solution to work great.

 

[dphantom]

Originally posted by: spudstr

Barracuda costs mor elike 400/year, MailFoundry is just as good and supports alot more users at a slightly more cost. Serversite we've found symantec anti-spam/brightmail/Premium solution to work great.[/quote]

I also have Instant Replacement in place. Updates only is about 400 annually as you pioint out.

 

[kamper]

If you like openbsd you might like spamd. It acts like an smtp proxy and doesn't inspect mail messages but pulls all sorts of nasty tricks on suspected spammers like slowing a connection down to the point that a spammer would give up where a real smtp server would wait to get the message through. Manages white, grey and blacklists to do it's filtering. It supposedly has very low resource usage for the amount of spam it cuts out.