Anti Spam Appliance

Anti Appliance Spam Installations Are Effective For Spam Protection

2007-07-03T08:35:00.000-07:00

Spams or unsolicited emails are matter of concerns for all those who use email. Spamming that is essentially a way of online marketing is carried out by professional email marketing agencies. They collect email addresses from various sources and then send bulk emails that in most cases are advertisements. These emails are hardly of any use for the receivers and these emails only clog up the resources of the system. Though software spam protection is the most commonly adopted method to filter spam, at the large enterprises where the volume of data transfer is huge an anti appliance spam is the best effective way to protect the system from spams.

Appliance is a term in the term that means dedicated hardware systems. When a system is maintained to execute one specific task, it is referred as appliance. An anti appliance spam system is therefore a system that prevents the spams. This technique of installing a dedicated hardware and optimizing the operating system with a specific job of preventing spams is a costly solution that also requires regular maintenance and expert supervision. Therefore, anti spam appliances are mainly found at the gateway or in front of the mail server. Often organizations and enterprises with larger networks use this technique to effective protect their system from the spamming. This is an elaborate arrangement but a sure-fire way of negating the spam and sorting the emails that are important.

Though there are so many anti spamming softwares are available in the market these days, the importance of the anti appliance spam protection have never gone down. There are few reasons behind that. The most significant amongst them is the fact that no software can guarantee error free spam protection. Whatever software spam protection you use, there are chances that the spam will surpass the spam filter and even your important mail will be blocked and marked as a spam. As the spammers keep changing the techniques for composing the spams, these problems continue to happen in case of anti spam softwares. But with a dedicated system that is run by an operating system, optimized for spam protection only it is the best effective solution to prevent the spam.

If you want to ensure complete protection against unsolicited emails, you need to regularly monitor the changes in spamming technique and optimize the anti appliance spam system accordingly. It requires continuous monitoring by expert professionals.

Anti Spam at the Enterprise Level

2007-05-21T16:26:00.000-07:00

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.

Technorati tags: anti spam appliance anti spam spam anti spam software Ron Paul ron paul Galilea Montijo galilea montijo murray waas RailsConf railsconf youtube gtd myspace popfly paris hilton bebo mario lopez immigration wolfowitz aquantive joost videos starcraft starcraft 2 michael buble

Firewall Protection - Does Your Firewall Do This?

2007-05-21T16:22:00.000-07:00

The first thing people think about when defending their computers and networks is an up-to-date antivirus program. Without this most basic protection, your computer will get a virus, which could just slow it down or potentially bring the pc to a complete standstill!

So anti-virus software is the answer? An anti-virus solution on it's own is not the answer to all of your problems, it can only protect you so much; in fact test have shown that a new pc running Windows XP if left connected to the Internet unprotected will be infected with viruses and remotely controlled via unauthorised persons within 20 minutes! To protect you against hackers and often to prevent spyware and 'scumware' from communicating directly with their servers about information it may have picked up from your pc, a firewall should form the key part of your e-security solution. Previously, the targets of hackers were large institutions, banks and government organisations; now hackers try to steal your personal information, including bank details and passwords directly from your PC on a daily basis.

But perhaps you don't consider that your data is particularly valuable? You will be the one who suffers the consequences when it is destroyed, and these consequences are usually expressed in economic terms. If you lose your data, you will have to pay someone to try and recover it for you, and if your computer is illegally hijacked and used to attack others, then you will also have to handle any legal issues that may result from this.

What will a firewall do to limit the danger to your systems? A decent firewall is sometimes referred to as a 'choke-point' or 'bridge'. Every piece of data that comes into your network has to go through the firewall in order that data of undesirable content and unauthorised users cannot gain access to your computer or network.

A good firewall will also hide the fact from others, that you are actually connected to the Internet, stopping software that pings, sniffs and queries IP addresses in the hope of finding a system to attack.

A firewall will cloak me, but which one do I need? There are two different types of firewall available for you to use; a software firewall that is loaded onto your computer and a hardware firewall. In truth, both types are software, but the hardware one is a dedicated firewall appliance, whose only job is to perform firewall functionality. A clear advantage of a hardware firewall, is that if you happen to install some sort of maleware or virus on your system, it cannot take over your firewall.

Unified Threat Management firewall functionality Unified Threat Management products are defined as those that act as firewalls, include intrusion detection and protection, and also deal with viruses.

Does your current firewall perform content filtering, spam filtering, intrusion detection and anti-virus duties? All of these functions are usually on a number of different pieces of hardware, taking up valuable space in your server racks. The technology within business grade firewalls has become considerably more robust, and paved the way to add these additional, but vital functions to the one appliance.

The administration time has been cut significantly, as there is only one appliance; product selection is quicker and easier, as is product integration and ongoing support. With only one appliance, troubleshooting also becomes a lot less of an issue. If the firewall were to fail, then only one piece of hardware needs to be swapped out; which means that your business can be back up and running faster.

Winding up In conclusion a good firewall should do the following things: * Protect your personal data * Protect your computers resources * Protect your reputation and that of your business * Protect your liability

Technorati tags: anti spam appliance anti spam spam anti spam software Ron Paul ron paul Galilea Montijo galilea montijo murray waas RailsConf railsconf youtube gtd myspace popfly paris hilton bebo mario lopez immigration wolfowitz aquantive joost videos starcraft starcraft 2 michael buble

Anti Spam Appliances

2007-05-20T17:51:00.000-07:00

Deployed at the gateway or in front of the mail server, antispam appliances are hardware-based solutions integrated with on-board anti-spam software and are normally driven by an operating system optimized for spam filtering.

Barracuda Spam Filter [Listing updated: 6 May 2007]

Barracuda Networks manufactures the Barracuda Spam Firewall family, the most trusted spam-blocking networking devices for small and large companies. The Barracuda Spam Firewall handles a massive amount of email, over 10 million messages a day, without bogging down your email servers. It also filters out viruses at the same time. The innovative hardware and software design incorporates reliability from the ground up. To provide you with maximum protection against the latest types of spam and virus attacks, Barracuda Networks also maintains a powerful operations center, Barracuda Central. From there, our engineers continuously monitor the Internet for trends in spam and virus attacks. Updates to counter these attacks are then automatically retrieved by your Barracuda Spam Firewall, thus relieving you of this task.

Company:	Barracuda Networks
Screenshot:	click here
Brochure:	click here

Astaro Security Gateway Appliance [Listing updated: 22 April 2006]

Astaro Security Gateway network security appliances provide complete, cost-effective protection against a wide range of information security threats. Astaro's technology has been tested and proven on over 25,000 networks and has won multiple awards including best Business Security Appliance of 2005 from PC Magazine.

Company:

Astaro

MXtreme Mail Firewall Appliance [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

MXtreme Mail Firewall provides the latest protection against viruses, SPAM and employee misuse, but adds new defenses against: Malformed messages carrying malicious code; Buffer overflow attacks against mail servers and their underlying OS; Attacks against remote access systems like Outlook Web Access and iNotes. These new threats need new defenses, and the MXtreme Mail Firewall delivers them in a new high security appliance. A key requirement for today’s office is remote access to email. MXtreme's Secure Web Mail delivers authenticated (e.g. RSA SecurID), encrypted proxied sessions for users to access their own internal mailboxes, using its own Web interface, Lotus iNotes and Outlook Web Access. MXtreme implements a three-tier SPAM barrier: configurable filters based on source systems, use of RBL lists to reject known SPAM, smart pattern matching to reject based on suspicious message envelope characteristics.

Company:	BorderWare Technologies Inc.
Brochure:	click here

IronMail [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

CipherTrust's anti-spam solution provides unparalleled detection and policy enforcement capabilities, while mitigating the challenges of managing a daily outpouring of spam and unwanted messages. Integral to IronMail's success have been its best-of-breed tools, gateway-based architecture and multi-faceted approach to spam detection and management. Using IronMail, businesses benefit from enterprise-wide spam management designed to improve detection rates, enhance network manageability, and eliminate blocking legitimate mail (false positives). Key tools in IronMail's arsenal are the Enterprise Spam Profiler (ESP) system, User Quarantine system, and the CipherTrust Research team.

Company:	CipherTrust, Inc.
Brochure:	click here

GWGuardian Appliance [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

By using a multi-layered GroupWise anti-spam defense with advanced POP/IMAP and SMTP security options, GWGuardian is a complete GroupWise mail firewall that prevents unauthorized use of GWIA, blocks scan attacks, and enforces authentication of users sending email. GWGuardian also blocks messages based on real-time blacklists (RBL), limits the number of simultaneous connections, and rejects connections from specified addresses or IPs. GWGuardian is compatible with any mail server, including Novell GroupWise 5.5-6.x. The gateway is deployed safely behind your corporate firewall through a single connection, effectively enhancing your server's security. Furthermore, GWGuardian provides gateway intelligence that features unique user-aware pre-authentication to prevent Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and caches authenticated users for optimal performance. Once a message is received by GWGuardian, it connects to the mail server to verify if the user exists: if not, the message is rejected.

Company:

Messaging Architects

Meridius Email Gateway appliance [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

Stop email attacks in their tracks, and add an ironclad layer of perimeter security to your network with the enterprise-class Meridius 1000 Email Gateway Appliance. Secure your mail relays and protect an unlimited number of email accounts with real-time spam detection achieving catch rates higher than 99%-yet zero false positives.

Shield your networks with 100% effective virus blocking, backed by automated virus definition updates, and an unrivalled virus quarantine system. The Meridius 1000 dedicated appliance takes the guesswork out of safeguarding your networks, offering powerful protection without risk to privacy, mail flow, or network resources.

Company:

BlueCat Networks, Inc.

SpamGate [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

SpamGate Anti-spam Appliance SpamGate is ideal for small, medium, and large enterprises & education customers. The SpamGate appliance quickly eliminates spam from enterprise email systems. Most anti-spam appliances require time-consuming and management-intensive rules, blacklists or signatures to work. But SpamGate intercepts spam at the gateway level, filtering out questionable email before it impacts the email servers. Administrators can install and configure SpamGate in less than 30 minutes. SpamGate goes immediately to work, eliminating 95% of junk email while letting good email through. How SpamGate works SpamGate acts as a gateway positioned between the Internet and your mail server. Inbound mail is routed to the SpamGate appliance where it is checked for Spam characteristics, malformed headers, and Viruses. If the message is tagged as Spam, SpamGate can automatically delete the Spam message, modify the subject line to indicate “Possible Spam”, modify the message header, forward the Spam message to a common mailbox, or reject the Spam message.

Company:	WorkGroup Solutions
Screenshot:	click here
Brochure:	click here

PowerElf II Appliance [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

The PowerElf II antispam appliance stops spam from clogging your network. The PowerElf server uses several different techniques to help stop spam at its entry point, long before it has a chance to travel to the end-user’s mailbox. It can be used to filter mail and forward clean mail to your delegate mail server, or can replace your existing mail server.

Company:	Greencomputer Innovation
Screenshot:	click here
Brochure:	click here

AntiSpam-One Corporate edition [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

AntiSpam-One Corporate edition is a rackable appliance which blocks spam and email attacks at the Internet gateway. It works as an SMTP proxy (also called SMTP relay), typically installed on your DMZ next to the corporate mail relay server. The only changes to be made to your existing configuration are the DNS MX Record associated to your email domains in order to route all incoming email traffic through the appliance before being sent to your mail server. The auto-install mode allows you to be up and running in minutes with a standard optimized configuration. Each incoming email goes through a series of different filters to sort out valid email from spam. A "spamicity" score which measures its likelihood to be spam is assigned to each email. A spam category (Adult, Hoax, Rumours, Illegal material, Chain letters) is also assigned at the end of the filtering process. Based on this information, different processing can be applied: change subject, redirect, delete, quarantine, quotas, trace. Specific processing can be applied to attachments or html content, as for example, stripping out all active html components (VBS scripts, Java applets…) Through a secure web interface, each user can access a fully comprehensive report and modify their own processing policy within the limits set by the administrator. Users can also view their emails in quarantine and retrieve them if necessary. The appliance supports several authentication mechanisms internally but can also be linked to your central authentication system (LDAP, Active Directory, Radius).

Company:

Bizanga

Spam Marshall Spamwall Appliance [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

Appliances deploy immediately at the network perimeter, with minimal extended investment and virtually no additional administration; you get the fastest return value in the industry. For organizations who prioritize ease of installation and use, the Spam Marshall Appliance is the solution. Spam Marshall Spamwall appliance is a plug-n-play device that fits into your network just like any other network device. It comes preconfigured for your network and all you need to do is plug it in and change your firewall/MX records so your SMTP traffic now passes through this device. This is truely a "ready, set, done" solution. Features include: Optimized/Hardened OS ; Remote management features; Remote Installation/Configuration.

Company:	ITA Networks, Inc.
Screenshot:	click here

Accessio Appliance [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

Accessio Appliance provides you with MiaVia's breakthrough spam filtering solution conveniently pre-installed on a rack mountable server computer that has been factory-tuned to provide secure and optimal Accessio filtering performance. Accessio Appliance requires no per-seat license. In addition, the Appliance is a "closed box" delivering extreme ease of installation and minimal maintenance. It can be managed by the system administrator via a Web browser.

Company:	MiaVia, Inc.
Brochure:	click here

Symantec Mail Security Series [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

Symantec Mail Security Series appliances offer the most accurate email security, powered by industry-leading Brightmail AntiSpam technology from Symantec, the global leader in information security.* Brightmail AntiSpam technology leverages over 20 spam prevention techniques, delivering antispam effectiveness rates of 95% and the industry’s highest accuracy rate against false positives (99.9999%)*. Symantec's global Brightmail Logistics Operations Centers (BLOC) analyze spam across the globe and provide secure, automatic spam filter updates every 10 minutes to help thwart attacks. Real-time scanning, using award-winning Symantec AntiVirus technologies, protects against email-borne threats, while a mass-mailer cleanup feature automatically removes the emails associated with mass-mailing worms.

Company:	Symantec Corporation
Brochure:	click here

Proofpoint Protection Server [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

Proofpoint's Protection Server delivers a secure, complete message protection in a hardened, easy-to-deploy package. Secures your network against spam, viruses, network level attacks such buffer overflows, denial of service (DoS) and directory harvesting attacks; Enforces corporate email policy and protect confidential information; Deploys the most comprehensive message protection solution in mere minutes, by simply plugging the appliance into your network; Exceeds the scalability and availability requirements demanded by enterprises. Proofpoint's MLX Machine Learning technology is unmatched at detecting and filtering spam, and can be customized to the environment and lexicon of each customer.

Company:	Proofpoint, Inc.
Screenshot:	click here
Brochure:	click here

RazorGate [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

Mirapoint's RazorGate email security appliance delivers multi-layered protection from spam, virus and hacker attacks. It provides real-time updates to reduce the window of vulnerability resulting in airtight security at the edge of the network. The appliance form factor makes it easy to deploy with minimal ongoing administration.

Company:	Mirapoint Inc.
Brochure:	click here

Message Server [Listing updated: 11 February 2006]

The Mirapoint Message Server appliance is a high-performance email server that provides desktop email as well as web and wireless access. It also features integrated technology to block spam, viruses and hacker attacks, plus a portfolio of collaborative services such as group calendaring.

Company:	Mirapoint Inc.
Brochure:	click here

Defencity MailSecure [Listing updated: 29 September 2005]

MailSecure provides comprehensive, policy-based email filtering and attachment virus scanning to protect organisations against liability claims, Spam attacks, and the loss of proprietary information. With its new modular scanning technology, MailSecure ensures that only approved attachments and desired content enter or leave the network.

Company:	Defencity
Brochure:	click here

SecurenceMail [Listing updated: 17 August 2005]

Securence deploys a DNA matching of sorts. It is adaptive to the ever-changing spam message environment, capturing all non-text image files and other obfuscation techniques. The network of spam traps along with other ID layers typically block 98% of all inbound spam with zero false positives produced. What's more, Securence typically strips out 88% of their customers' total in-bound email right off the top. The remaining 12% is clean and virus-free.

Company:

US Internet Corp.

AutumnTECH Appliance [Listing updated: 27 June 2005]

AutumnTECH develops innovative anti-spam, anti-virus, unauthorized Internet access filtering, and exploit detection appliances. Their core line of perimeter facing security appliances protect business assets from all types of malicious activity. AutumnTECH highlights include highly effective spam identification, self-updating virus check and alert engine, malware and phishing sanitizer, sender policy framework support, LDAP user authentication, support for Bayesian self/auto learning, Greylisting including manual white/black lists, RBL IP/domain name based lookup blocking, Vipul's razor checksum blocking, SURBL content domain name lookup and blocker, per-user spam quarantine controls, ISP POP3 mailbox downloader and filter, clustering support for high availability, full-feature intrusion detection system (IDS), and expert customer service and support.

Company:	AutumnTECH, LLC
Brochure:	click here

Eland SYS-2 [Listing updated: 22 May 2005]

The Eland SYS-2 is a network security appliance which offers an integrated and comprehensive solution to protect your network at the perimeter. With its built-in firewall, Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus protection, Web content filtering and Virtual Private Network, it offers you maximum security measures. The Eland SYS-2 is easy to deploy and use. It comes without any per-user or per-connection license restrictions. This translates into an unlimited number of users without any additional cost.

Company:	Eland Systems
Brochure:	click here

CanIt Appliance [Listing updated: 22 May 2005]

CanIt and CanIt-PRO antispam software is available pre-configured on a plug-and-play appliance. The appliance is ideal for organizations that use MS Exchange as their mail server, and for businesses that lack IT personnel. The CanIt Appliance resides between the Internet and your mail server, filtering e-mail before it enters your e-mail system. The appliance includes CanIt or CanIt-PRO software and Clam AntiVirus software. The base appliance contains a 2.4GHz Intel Pentium IV with 512MB of RAM. Appliances with faster processors, multiple processors, and more memory are available. In addition, multiple appliances can be clustered to handle very large mail volumes.

Company:	Roaring Penguin Software Inc.
Brochure:	click here

espion Interceptor [Listing updated: 9 July 2004]

The espion Interceptor combines best-of-class security design methodologies with adaptive filtering techniques to intercept or sanitize up to 99% of unwanted or potentially dangerous emails. Secure, scalable, platform-independent, and automated—the espion Interceptor is the enterprise solution to secure the email gateway, eliminate spam, and free up I.T. resources. Without per-user license fees or additional hidden costs, you can choose a solution that fits your organization's actual mailflow, instead of continuously paying for rarely-used accounts .......and the appliance is yours to keep. The Interceptor installs in just 30 minutes at the edge of a customer's network and immediately begins filtering spam email, addressing security threats before they enter an organization's network. Based on espion's proprietary algorithm for adaptive machine learning, espion Bayes, the Interceptor continuously maximizes spam blocking and minimizes false positives with virtually no administration.

Company:	espion Intl
Brochure:	click here

trimMail Inbox [Listing updated: 15 May 2004]

Many email servers that worked fine two years ago stagger under today's spam-and-virus induced load. trimMail Inbox a reliable anti-spam and content filtering appliance for SMTP mail servers designed to solve this problem. It bats away spam and disables most viruses, turning under-performing turkeys back into high-flying eagles. Because it stands alone as an easy-to-use SMTP gateway, trimMail Inbox will not compete inside existing mail servers for cpu, memory or storage space. And it will not conflict with any software or updating processes embedded in existing email servers. Properly configured, trimMail Inbox also prevents open relaying while shielding downstream anti-virus software and mail servers from Denial of Service attacks. This frees existing email servers so they can serve more mail than ever before, which delays the inconvenience and expense of migrating to new equipment and software. Automatic update and feature upgrade intervals are set by the trimMail Inbox administrator.

Company:

dymeta Division of Comco, Inc.

IronMail E-Mail and Spam Filter Appliance by 8e6 Technologies [Listing updated: 30 March 2004]

8e6 Technologies has partnered with CipherTrust to offer the first secure gateway appliance for email, integrating defenses against all major email threats into a hardened appliance to provide a total security solution for your email system. It is the only product capable of providing unified email policy enforcement to deal with all types of email threats, including viruses, hackers, worms, intruders, spam, libelous content and offer secure delivery of email, including web mail. IronMail offers the most comprehensive anti-spam solution available by integrating traditional tools, intelligent analysis technologies and human analysis for anti-spam, content filtering and policy management.

Company:	8e6 Technologies
Brochure:	click here

MailGate [Listing updated: 25 January 2004]

Tumbleweed’s award-winning Linux-based anti-spam appliance is based on its proprietary IBF technology. IBF technology uses Artificial Intelligence to determine the intent of information rather than relying on ineffective techniques such as blacklists, white lists, signatures, or rules. IBF acts like a human reader, examining each email to see if it meets the criteria for spam, commercial bulk email from valid advertisers, or legitimate messages. It then sends the legitimate email on to user mailboxes, along with any commercial email that a user wants to receive. Since IBF does not require constant updating or blacklist subscriptions, it returns high filtration and low false-positive rates. It also has an extremely low total cost of ownership (TCO). The MailGate installs in just 15 minutes on any network and immediately begins filtering email before it reaches the server. Since the MailGate prevents spam from hitting the email servers, this significantly improves server performance and bandwidth.

Company:	Tumbleweed Communications Corp.
Brochure:	click here

ePrism Mail Filter [Listing updated: 1 October 2003]

ePrism is a mail filtering appliance that provides organizations with a total spam management solution. ePrism delivers a unique combination of e-mail security, spam protection, anti-virus and content control in a robust high-performance appliance. Designed to be deployed between internal mail servers and the Internet, ePrism supports standard mail protocols and features a complete and robust set of security capabilities specifically designed to protect against the full spectrum of e-mail security threats.

Company:	St. Bernard Software
Brochure:	click here

MailFoundry [Listing updated: 1 October 2003]

MailFoundry has partnered with Mail-Filters, Inc., Sophos and Sun Microsystems to offer the most reliable and effective security appliance for e-mail. MailFoundry is hardened against all major e-email security threats and able to defeat spam and virus attacks in realtime. In addition to the built in protection, MailFoundry also provides e-mail policy rules for dealing with attachments and other email filtering. MailFoundry offers the most comprehensive anti-spam solution available while offering the trust of "zero kills" on legitimate email. With MailFoundry, there is no such thing as "grey mail" and you never have to worry about your important e-mails being accidentally filtered.

Company:

Solinus, Inc.

Technorati tags: anti spam appliance anti spam spam anti spam software Technorati tags: vioxx vioxx attorney vioxx lawyer vioxx lawyers Ron Paul ron paul Galilea Montijo galilea montijo murray waas RailsConf railsconf youtube gtd myspace popfly paris hilton bebo mario lopez immigration wolfowitz aquantive joost

How Spammers Fool Spam Filters

2007-05-04T17:53:00.000-07:00

by CipherTrust

And How to Stop Them

Effectively stopping spam over the long-term requires much more than blocking individual IP addresses and creating rules based on keywords that spammers typically use. The increasing sophistication of tools spammers use coupled with the increasing number of spammers in the wild has created a hyper-evolution in the variety and volume of spam. The old ways of blocking the bad guys just don't work anymore.

Examining spam and spam-blocking technology can illuminate how this evolution is taking place and what can be done to combat spam and reclaim e-mail as the efficient, effective communication tool it was intended to be.

There are several widely-used methods for filtering spam, each of which can be defeated by spammers to some degree. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and the methods spammers use to defeat them is the basis of an effective, comprehensive anti-spam strategy.

Signature-based Filters

Signature-based filters examine the contents of known spam, usually derived from honey pots, or dummy e-mail addresses set up specifically to collect spam. Once a honey pot receives a spam message, the content is examined and given a unique identifier. The unique identifier is obtained by assigning a value to each character in the e-mail. Once all characters have been assigned a value, the values are totaled, creating the spam's signature. The signature is added to a signature database and sent as a regular update to the e-mail service's subscribers. The signature is compared to every e-mail coming in to the network and all matching messages are discarded as spam.

The benefit of signature-based filters is that they rarely produce false-positives, or legitimate e-mail incorrectly identified as spam.

The drawback of signature-based filters is that they are very easy to defeat. Because they are backward-looking, they only deal with spam that has already been sent. By the time the honey pot receives a spam message, the system assigns a signature, and the update is sent and installed on the subscribers' network, the spammer has already sent millions of e-mails. A slight modification of the e-mail message will render the existing signature useless.

Furthermore, spammers can easily evade signature-based filters by using special e-mail software that adds random strings of content to the subject line and body of the e-mail. Because the variable content alters the signature of each e-mail sent by the spammer, signature-based spam filters are unable to match the e-mail to known pieces of spam.

Developers of signature-based spam filters have learned to identify the tell-tale signs of automated random character generation. But as is often the case, spammers remain a step ahead and have developed more sophisticated methods for inserting random content. As a result, most spam continues to fool signature-based filters.

Rule-based (Heuristic) Filtering

Rule-based filters scan e-mail content for predetermined words or phrases that may indicate a message is spam. For example, if an e-mail administrator includes the word "sex" on a company's rule-based list, any e-mail containing this word will be filtered.

The major drawback of this approach is the difficulty in identifying keywords that are consistently indicative of spam. While spammers may frequently use the words "sex" and 'Viagra" in spam e-mails, these words are also used in legitimate business correspondence, particularly in the healthcare industry. Additionally, spammers have learned to obfuscate suspect words by using spellings such as "S*E*X", or "VI a a GRR A".

It is impossible to develop dictionaries that identify every possible misspelling of "spammy" keywords. Additionally, because filtering for certain keywords produces large numbers of false positives, many organizations have found they cannot afford to rely solely on rule-based filters to identify spam.

Blacklists

The goal of blacklisting is to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to crack-down on customers who send spam. A blacklisted ISP is blocked from sending e-mail to organizations. When an ISP is blacklisted, they are provided with a list of actions they must take in order to be removed from the blacklist. This controversial method blocks not just the spammers, but all of the ISP's customers. Blacklisting is generally considered an unfriendly approach to stopping spam because the users most affected by the blacklist are e-mail users who do not send spam. Many argue blacklisting actually damages the utility of e-mail more than it helps stop spam since the potential for blocking legitimate e-mail is so high.

In addition to the ethical considerations, there are other problems with blacklists. Many blacklists are not updated frequently enough to maintain effectiveness. Some blacklist administrators are irresponsible in that they immediately block suspect servers without thoroughly investigating complaints or giving the ISP time to respond. Another downside is that blacklists are not accurate enough to catch all spam. Only about half of servers used by spammers, regardless of how diligent the blacklist administrator may be, are ever cataloged in a given blacklist.

Blacklists are used because they can be partially effective against spammers who repeatedly use the same ISP or e-mail account to send spam. However, because spammers often change ISPs, re-route e-mail and hijack legitimate servers, the spammer is a moving target. Blacklist administrators are forced to constantly revise lists, and the lag-time between when a spammer begins using a given server and when the blacklist administrator is able to identify the new spam source and add it to the blacklist allows spammers to send hundreds of millions of e-mails. Spammers consider this constant state of flux a part of doing business and are constantly looking for new servers to send spam messages.

Blacklists, therefore, have some utility in stopping known spammers. Because of their limitations, however, this data should only be used in conjunction with other sources to determine if a given message is spam.

Whitelists

Whitelists are databases of trusted e-mail sources. The list may contain specific e-mail addresses, IP addresses or trusted domains. E-mails received from a whitelisted source are allowed to pass through the system to the user's email box. The list is built when users and e-mail administrators manually add trusted sources to the whitelist. Once built, the catch-rate for spam can be close to 100%, however, whitelists produce an inordinate number of false positives.

It is virtually impossible to produce an exhaustive list of all possible legitimate e-mail senders because legitimate e-mail can come from any number of sources. To get around this difficulty, some organizations have instituted a challenge-response methodology. When an unknown sender sends an e-mail to a user's account, the system automatically sends a challenge back to the sender. Some challenge-response systems require the sender to read and decipher an image containing letters and numbers. The image is designed to be unreadable by a machine, but easily recognizable by a human. Spammers would not spend the time required to go through a large number of challenge-response e-mails, so they drop the address and move on to those users who don't use such a system.

Whitelists are only partially successful and impractical for many users. For example, problems can arise when users register for online newsletters, order products online or register for online services. If the user does not remember to add the new e-mail source to their whitelist, or if the domain or source is entered incorrectly, the communication will fail. Additionally, whitelists impose barriers to legitimate e-mail communication and are viewed by some as just plain rude.

Whitelists are not widely used by e-mail users and administrators as a primary tool to fight spam because of the high number of false positives, and the difficulties in creating a comprehensive list of e-mail sources. Because whitelists are not widely used, spammers typically do not develop countermeasures. As with other spam fighting techniques, whitelists are most effective when used in conjunction with other anti-spam tools.

Bayesian Filters

Named after Thomas Bayes, an English mathematician, Bayesian Logic is used in decision making and inferential statistics. Bayesian Filers maintain a database of known spam and ham, or legitimate e-mail. Once the database is large enough, the system ranks the words according to the probability they will appear in a spam message.

Words more likely to appear in spam are given a high score (between 51 and 100), and words likely to appear in legitimate e-mail are given a low score (between 1 and 50). For example, the words "free" and "sex" generally have values between 95 and 98, whereas the words "emphasis" or "disadvantage" may have a score between 1 and 4.

Commonly used words such as "the" and "that", and words new to the Bayesian filters are given a neutral score between 40 and 50 and would not be used in the system's algorithm.

When the system receives an e-mail, it breaks the message down into tokens, or words with values assigned to them. The system utilizes the tokens with scores on the high and low end of the range and develops a score for the e-mail as a whole. If the e-mail has more spam tokens than ham tokens, the e-mail will have a high spam score. The e-mail administrator determines a threshold score the system uses to allow e-mail to pass through to users.

Bayesian filters are effective at filtering spam and minimizing false positives. Because they adapt and learn based on user feedback, Bayesian Filers produce better results as they are used within an organization over time.

Bayesian filters are not, however, foolproof. Spammers have learned which words Bayesian Filters consider spammy and have developed ways to insert non-spammy words into e-mails to lower the message's overall spam score. By adding in paragraphs of text from novels or news stories, spammers can dilute the effects of high-ranking words. Text insertion has also caused normally legitimate words that are found in novels or news stories to have an inflated spam score. This may potentially render Bayesian filters less effective over time.

Another approach spammers use to fool Bayesian filters is to create less spammy e-mails. For example, a spammer may send an e-mail containing only the phrase, "Here's the link…". This approach can neutralize the spam score and entice users to click on a link to a Web site containing the spammer's message. To block this type of spam, the filter would have to be designed to follow the link and scan the content of the Web site users are asked to visit. This type of filtering is not currently employed by Bayesian filters because it would be prohibitively expensive in terms of server resources and could potentially be used as a method of launching denial of service attacks against commercial servers.

As with all single-method spam filtering methodologies, Bayesian filters are effective against certain techniques spammers use to fool spam filters, but are not a magic bullet to solving the spam problem. Bayesian filters are most effective when combined with other methods of spam detection.

The Solution

When used alone, each anti-spam technique has been systematically overcome by spammers. Grandiose plans to rid the world of spam, such as like charging a penny for each e-mail received or forcing servers to solve mathematical problems before delivering e-mail, have been proposed with few results. These schemes are not realistic and would require a large percentage of the population to adopt the same spam eradication method in order to be effective.

Working alone, each individual spam-blocking technique works with varying degrees of effectiveness and is susceptible to a certain number of false positives. Fortunately, the solution is already at hand. IronMail®, the secure e-mail gateway appliance from CipherTrust®, provides a highly accurate solution by correlating the results of single-detection techniques with its industry-leading correlation engine, the Spam Profiler™.

Learn more about stopping spam by requesting CipherTrust's free whitepaper, "Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way".

The core of IronMail's spam capabilities, the Spam Profiler analyzes, inspects and scores e-mail on over one thousand different message characteristics. Each method is weighed based on historical accuracy rates and analysis by CipherTrust's experienced research team.

Optimizing the Spam Profiler requires precise calibration and testing thousands of combinations of values associated with various message characteristics. To automate this process, CipherTrust developed Genetic Optimization™, an advanced analysis technique that replicates cutting-edge DNA matching models. Genetic Optimization identifies the best possible combination of values for all characteristics examined by the Spam Profiler and automatically tunes the IronMail appliance, reducing administrator intervention and assuring optimum protection against spam and spam-born threats.

Take The Next Step

Learn more about how IronMail can secure enterprise e-mail systems by visiting www.ciphertrust.com or requesting CipherTrust's free whitepaper, "Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way". This resource will provide the information you need to make an informed decision about eliminating spam and securing your e-mail systems.

About the Author
CipherTrust is the leader in anti-spam and email security. Learn more by downloading our free whitepaper, "Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way" or by visiting www.ciphertrust.com.

Anti Spam at the Enterprise Level

2007-05-04T17:52:00.000-07:00

by 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.org and for general eCommerce go to http://building-ecommerce-websites.com

Internet Security in Education - What You Need to Know

2007-05-04T17:51:00.002-07:00

by Simon Heron

The Internet is a wonderful resource for schools and colleges, but it brings new problems to worry about. Stories about viruses, hackers and porn websites have become increasingly frequent in newspapers and on TV. For those in the education world, it can be difficult to separate the hype from the true risks, and to make decisions about how to tackle this problem.

The reality is somewhere between the extremes of the doom-mongers and those who don't see a problem: yes, Internet security threats can cause major problems and need to be taken seriously, but with some basic planning and a reasonable level of investment, they can be kept firmly under control.

Educational establishments today often have IT demands that are greater than many private companies, and schools and colleges may have 200 or more PCs networked together. With this level of IT systems, it's essential that there is the right level of Internet security in place to protect from hazards such as viruses, "spam" and inappropriate website content. However, schools and colleges have additional concerns to the private industry:

- A duty of care to protect pupils from offensive material. - Students' often reckless attitude towards security. - Lack of time for the person in charge of IT - particularly if they are a teacher with an already heavy workload. - Lack of financial resources.

Considering all this, it's a difficult job to keep Internet security protection up to a sufficiently high standard. The most common threats that need to be countered are:

- Viruses: these are small computer programs that can be inadvertently transferred by email from other Internet communications, like file sharing, or on floppy disks or CDs. They may be harmless, or can cause serious damage like erasing files or sending out malicious emails from the infected machine.

- Spam: this is a general term for junk or unsolicited email. The latest figures estimate that up to 90% of all email is spam - as well as the time it wastes for people to read and delete it, it uses up IT resources, and can be unpleasant.

- Intrusions and hackers: computers outside the school's network can try and 'hack' into the network if there is no protection. This can give them access to files on the school's PCs, potentially including confidential and sensitive information.

- Inappropriate website content: Internet users at the school or college could be looking at pornographic or other unsuitable material on websites - this is obviously particularly important to control for an educational establishment.

So, how to block these threats? Many different solutions are available on the market, including hardware, software, and managed services. At a basic level, most educational establishments have some form of firewall to block unauthorised Internet access, and anti-virus software.

Unfortunately, configuring them is far from easy. Once configured, they need to be updated every day to protect against new threats: a task that is time consuming, boring, and often ignored. The resulting lapses in security are frequently only discovered after a problem occurs.

Offensive material on the Internet can be filtered out, and various software or hardware tools are available to block spam emails. Intrusion detection and prevention is also an essential to block against attacks since firewalls in themselves cannot block many intrusion attempts without also blocking legitimate traffic), and further security measures are required if schools want to enable staff to work remotely.

Another issue to consider is how to handle teachers and students taking laptops home and then bringing them back onto the school network - possibly with a virus infection they've picked up away from the school. Here, the best approach is to put in place strict controls over which machines are allowed to be connected, and to ensure that all staff machines (and ideally those of pupils as well) have the latest anti-virus software installed, and that it is updated regularly. In practice, it's almost impossible to keep this level of control, and some level of protection is needed for the network and at the gateway from the school to the Internet.

While the update for Microsoft's Windows XP operating system (called Service Pack 2) has made positive strides to improve security, it is no substitute for the security protections described above. Furthermore, many schools will still have PCs running older versions of Windows (2000, ME or 98), which don't offer the same safeguards as the latest Windows XP version.

All of these security solutions require time-consuming monitoring and configuring, an investment in time to understand the systems, and in some cases further hardware to run them effectively on. Not something that your average IT manager, let alone teacher, has time for. In fact, the most costly part of Internet security is the IT expertise and time to configure, update and maintain the systems and software.

Virus writers are also getting smarter at exploiting the human weaknesses of ICT managers. It's no coincidence that several recent major viruses have been released on Friday evenings, giving them the best chance of causing havoc with unprotected systems over the weekend before the harassed ICT staff can update their anti-virus software.

To solve these issues, it's worth considering outsourcing Internet security. This provides fast, expert response to security threats, and updates against new dangers can be automatically provided. Costs are known up front, and outsourcing allows IT staff or teachers to concentrate on their core tasks - and to take holidays and weekends without the risk of leaving the school vulnerable!

In conclusion, Internet security is a threat that educational establishments must take seriously, and must allocate sufficient resources to deal with. There are different threats that must all be blocked to ensure the establishment is complying with its legal and moral duties to protect staff and students.

However, by putting in place the right combination of hardware and software tools, or by investing in an outsourced managed service or all-in-one security appliance, schools and colleges can tackle the security threat, and ensure their teachers and pupils can safely take advantage of the many benefits the Internet brings to education.

Email Anti Spam And Virus Protection For Businesses - There Is Hope

2007-05-04T17:51:00.001-07:00

by John Tourloukis

With anti spam vendors offering low cost licensing, businesses can now afford advanced email spam and virus protection with a simple to use interface at a much lower cost. The great thing about technology is that as it evolves it gets faster, additional features and economical. Over the past few years the same evolution has taken place with anti spam technology and services. In large part this can be attributed to the open source software community plus enterprising companies enhancing the capabilities of this software and packaging it into easy to use anti spam appliances.

It is not practical to have anti spam software running on desktops in a networked business environment. Managing all employee junk email software at the desktop is not realistic. It can be a nightmare and costly in terms time and licensing.

Spam appliances sit in front of your email server so that when email comes in it will first go to the spam appliance and the email will be scanned for spam as well as viruses. The filter will block the message if it identified as know spam. If the filter is not sure if the email is genuine it will quarantine and hold the email at the filter and it will be stored until the recipient deletes it, releases it to their email box, or they can white list a trusted correspondent so that future emails will not be held back. This will greatly reduce the load on your email server and reduce your bandwidth needs. We have seen anti spam systems block up to 83% of incoming messages. This could help extend the life of your email server and push back the need for upgraded capacity.

Most virus outbreaks occur via email and for little cost an appliance can block viruses before they reach your network and user's inboxes. This provides an extra layer of defense in addition to your current anti virus solution.

Businesses have two options if they use an appliance based solution for their spam and virus control. They can purchase and administer their own filter. This is a good option if you have a large number of employee mailboxes to protect and the technical staff to administer the spam appliance. Businesses also have the option to outsource their spam control as a hosted service. This is a good choice for smaller companies and if information technology is not your specialty.

If you purchase your own spam filter, a subscription to updates may also be required. Make sure you get upfront pricing for the add-ons that you will need. If you have more than 100 email users and the technical staff to maintain the spam appliance, buying your own filter may be your best option. Generally the basic model will work for most organizations. Large organizations with thousands of users will require a spam filter appliance with increases capacity and features. Spam appliances are designed to work with all mail systems but some do have specific enhancements for Exchange server Microsoft's popular collaboration software and mail servers that support LDAP (light weight directory access protocol). Spam appliances use the LDAP protocol to verify recipients before delivering messages to your email server, this avoids consuming server resources.

If your business has five to one hundred employees, then an outsourced anti spam and virus filter service is going to be a good economical choice for your organization. Fees are based on the number of users and you only pay for what you use. You will not have hardware to buy, maintain, and upgrade. The upfront cost is minimal and most email filtering providers will let you try the service for free at first. Another added benefit to outsourcing your spam control is redundancy. It is important that you choose a provider that has their spam and virus filters collocated at secure internet data center facilities. Data centers provide redundant network connections and power, so if your email server or internet connection is down unexpectedly the spam appliance will hold your email until your email server becomes available, minus spam and viruses.

Anti spam technology is constantly improving and the costs are getting lower. With increased productivity and an added layer of defense against virus attacks, an anti spam appliance or service is something your business can not afford to be without.

Strategies To Fight Email Spam

2007-05-04T17:50:00.001-07:00

by John Tourloukis

If you are a business owner and you rely on email, spam is going to be a major concern. How you address it can make a big difference in employee efficiency. Email spam has been a nuisance and has gotten even worse over the last several years. Email spam slows down server performance and can eat away at storage. Cleaning all those bad messages out of your inbox is time consuming. The easiest way for viruses to spread is via email.

Having a strategy to deal with email spam and viruses threats is essential for any business to survive and be productive. You can limit the negative impact to your business by having policies and guidelines in place.

Tips to avoid getting email spam:

If you have a company web site, use a contact form that the web site visitor can fill out. Some spam mers use robots that crawl web pages looking for email addresses. Your web site designer should be able to help you with this.

When signing up for forums, products and services use a free email or throwaway account like hotmail or Yahoo mail.

When signing up for offers be careful what boxes you check although technically not spam you may get a lot of email offers you do not want. Never reply to an email spam message, this just lets them know that your account is active.

You may want to use a throwaway email address if you post on newsgroups or forums.

These measures may help to reduce spam, but if you have an old email address you may want to change your email address or deploy a spam filter system. There are several choices for anti spam systems you could buy software that runs locally on your PC to filter the spam, but this can be expensive, does not prevent virus infection, and is not a good choice in a networked environment. Managing individual machine spam software is inefficient.

If you have limited technical resources you can outsource you email spam filtering to a hosted anti spam and virus solution provider. Spam filter service providers colocate their spam and virus filters in data centers with redundant power and network connections. You will need to change your mail exchanger on your dns servers to point to the service providers spam filters. Your service provider will then scrub your email for spam and viruses. They then forward your email to your mail server minus the spam and viruses. This gives you a few extra layers of protection. In the event of a network outage or server downtime your email is held and is delivered when the network or your server is available minus the virus and spam. Spam filter services also scan for viruses; this adds another layer of defense to the virus software already running on your network.

If you have an organization with more than one hundred email boxes investing in your own spam filter appliance is the most cost effective solution if you have the technical expertise to manage the system. A spam appliance sits in front of your email server and blocks spam and viruses. The price of the spam appliance will depend upon your number of users, amount of mail and storage requirements.

Fighting spam is no longer be a losing battle if you have a good strategy to deal with the threat.

Stop Spam in Your Company with a Spam Firewall

2007-05-04T17:48:00.000-07:00

by Debbie Jacobsen

A spam firewall is a hardware device that sits between your internet firewall and LAN. It is called a "firewall" because it provides data filtering of email packets, and blocks the packets that meet the criteria of "spam". Spam firewalls can also provide anti-virus protection, anti-spyware, anti-spoofing and anti-phishing services, depending on the model you choose. A spam firewall is not designed to protect your network against intruders such as hackers - you will need a regular internet firewall for that.

Spam firewalls use a variety of methods for determining what is considered spam and filtering it out. Normally a form of blacklisting is used, which automatically filters out email from known spammy addresses. A whitelist may also be used, which allows the administrator to identify addresses or domains that should never be blocked. Keyword scanning may also be used, allowing the administrator or individual user to block emails containing certain keywords or keyword combinations. A form of message authenticity checking is also normally used to identify valid "from" addresses, check details of the entire SMTP process, or validate legitimate IP addresses.

Many spam firewall appliances also use bayesian algorithm filtering, which help the firewall block more spam over time as it "learns" what is considered spam based on message history, user input and other analysis. Incoming message flow filters also look at the number of incoming messages and where they are from, allowing them to quickly spot and stop a sudden barrage of spam emails that have been mass-distributed from the same source. Spam firewalls are very "smart" and good at eliminating the majority of spam email that comes into a network. They are not 100% effective, but many come close.

Spam firewall appliances range in price from around $2000 up to $20,000 or more, depending on the number of users it needs to protect and features. Many spam firewalls have optional features like antivirus or anti spyware. Spam firewalls need to be kept up to date with the latest data on known spam sites, new algorithms, updated filters, etc... This is normally handled by the firewall manufacturer as an auto-update feature.

As with most network appliances, an annual maintenance plan is usually purchased for the purpose of keeping the firewall up to date and performing it's best.

Spam firewall appliances use many sophisticated techniques to identify and block spam, generally with very good success. Because spammers are constantly change their techniques in order to get their junk mail past the latest and greatest spam filtering technologies, spam firewalls must continually monitor patterns and make filtering corrections.

Spam firewall manufacturers are also constantly make corrective configuration changes to keep up with the battle against spammers. For this reason, even the best spam firewall is going to filter out "good" mail from time to time. This is called a "false positive", and administrators (and users) must always be on the lookout for this. Most spam firewalls have sensitivity thresholds that can be adjusted by an administrator to help overcome false positives.

A spam firewall appliance is not your typical "set it and forget it" firewall, but the advantage of having such an appliance on your network far outweighs the need for some administrative work.

About the Author
Debbie is an information technology professional and author of Antivirus, Firewall and Spyware Resources - an informative website about computer security. For more information, see her page on Spam Firewalls.

Anti Spam Protection

2007-04-20T22:38:00.000-07:00

Why do you need anti spam protection? Because it is the quickest way to get rid of junk email. Although every single one of us complains about spam very few people do anything about it.

But once you install anti spam protection on your computer you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner. It's not really expensive and is easy to install.

More than 40% of all e-mail today is still unsolicited sent to you by spammers. Even though the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was supposed to eliminate spam, email spammers still send millions of unwanted email messages everyday.

Most people think spam is just annoying and delete it without thinking twice about it. But what happens if one of your children opens a spam email without you even knowing it?

Spam protection is one of the most critical components of your computers security. You need to eliminate spam as quickly as possible because just opening some of these emails can engage spyware programs and even damage your computer.

Anti spam protection tools help stop identity theft and prevent the spread of Internet viruses which often arrive inside spam attachments. But it still allows legitimate email from friends, family and co-workers to arrive safely.

Anti spam protection puts you in charge of what you want and don't want coming into your computer. These programs are very cost effective and easy to install.

If you are ready to take back control of your Internet message Inbox and get rid of junk email, anti spam protection is the perfect solution. Copyright © 2005 Spyware Information.com All Rights Reserved.

About the Author
This article is provided by http://www.spyware-information.com where you will find free spyware cleaners, downloads, removal software, computer firewalls and valuable tips. For regularly updated articles about adware, spyware and protection from identity theft go to http://spyware-information.com/articles_1.html

Anti Spam Appliance

2007-04-20T22:33:00.000-07:00

Anti-spam appliances are hardware devices integrated with on-board software that implement anti-spam techniques (e-mail) and deployed at the gateway or in front of the mail server. They are normally driven by an operating system optimized for spam filtering. They are generally used in larger networks such as companies and corporations, ISPs, universities, etc.
Reasons anti-spam appliances might be selected instead of software could include:

The customer prefers to buy hardware rather than software
Ease of installation
Operating system requirements (e.g. company policy requires Linux, but software is not available under this OS)
Independence of existing hardware