Anti Spam At The Enterprise Level

by: Richard Keir
Copyright 2005 Richard Keir

Every one of us knows how spam impacts us. Every day we either get a ton of spam - or if we're
fairly well protected by spam filters - only a few pieces.

Like a large number of people, I don't use any spam filters. Ah. You think I'm insane. But wait.
My problem is that I get a lot of email from marketing types which I want to receive. And the spam
filtering software is not very sensitive to my needs. Even white-listing doesn't always work. So,
I prefer to get all that spam and just delete it.

Now this solution can work for me despite the time it takes to delete my daily overdose of spam.
However, at the enterprise level, it's a whole different story. If you have a relatively large
internal network with even a modest number of email users, you're looking at a major problem. And
the more users you have, the worse the problem is.

Sure, you can put up software on the mail server. Works, kind of. But pretty soon you may find you
need to upgrade the mail server. And that's after you already put it on a stand-alone machine.

Rather than continuing to buy ever more expensive software to run on a machine that keeps needing
to be upgraded, you might want to think about a dedicated anti spam appliance.

To give you some idea of what's possible let's take a look at Barracuda Networks dedicated anti
spam appliance. All you need to do is put this baby in front of your mail server. I say baby,
advisedly because this one will learn by doing and by training provided by your users.

Dean Drako, CEO of Barracuda Networks said, "Bayesian filtering is still one of the most accurate
defenses against spam. The new plug-ins allow users to directly train the Bayesian filter, making
the Barracuda Spam Firewall even more accurate based on the users individual email preferences.
Viruses and other threats can infect the network quickly if they are not stopped at the network
edge. With Intent Analysis our customers have an advantage over these threats because the
Barracuda Spam Firewall is able to block them real time. Consequently we have consistently been a
first responder when some of the most malicious virus attacks have hit, saving our customers from
potentially devastating damage to their networks."

This is one beautiful little machine. A Barracuda Spam Firewall can support from 1,000 to 30,000
active users. It can usually be installed in less than five minutes and receives automatic hourly
updates for new forms of spam and viruses. It has a 10 layer defense system beyond the use of open
source anti spam and anti virus solutions: denial of service and security protection, IP block
list, rate control, virus check with archive decompression, proprietary virus check, user
specified rules, spam fingerprint check, Intent Analysis, spam rule-based scoring, and Bayesian
analysis. Plus it also does both inbound and outbound email filtering with the inclusion of
sophisticated outbound email filtering techniques (just in case you've got a spam zombie on board
or somebody's got an infected PC).

However, it isn't exactly cheap. Still, when you consider the time, bandwidth, user frustration
and potential hardware upgrade costs, the price may look a lot more reasonable. You can check it
out at http://www.barracudanetworks.com/

If you are in the market for an anti-spam appliance, the Barracuda Spam Firewall isn't your only
choice. The impact of spam on internet businesses - even those who primarily use it for just email
- is so great that a simple search for "anti spam appliance" will find you a number of
alternatives to examine. Even McAfee is getting into the anti spam hardware game.

I'm hoping that it won't be too long before I can pick up a Bayesian multi-level anti spam, anti
virus firewall appliance for my home PC that keeps me safe and cuts my need to delete without
deep-sixing the email I want or costing me more than I can afford. I suspect it's on the way.


About the author:
Richard writes in a variety of areas involving eBusiness and the internet. For more on spam visit
http://anti-spam.werkz.organd for general eCommerce go to http://building-ecommerce-websites.com


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