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To Allow or Not Allow E-Mail Attachments?

Posted by Cliff on from the that-is-the-question dept.

t0pper311 asks: "I work for a pretty large utility company in the midwest and of course, security is a big concern. We use Trend Micro as a mail gateway to basically scan for virii and strip off most attachments like executables or VB script. Now with the Sobig.E virus on the loose, we need to ask ourselves if we should be blocking ZIP files. We got lucky this time and were not effected, but what about next time? What are other companies doing? If you do block ZIP files, how do you give the people who need to sends files the ability to do so? Do you allow any attachments at all?"

2 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. You get a virii scanner that can deal with zip.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Pretty simple really.

    Given that most users love to download crap via hotmail etc. , lets hope you have a virus scanner on their PC too.

  2. Similar issue happened like 10 years ago by Smartcowboy · · Score: 5, Informative

    10 years ago, on BBS (bulletin board system), every time someone uploaded something, the system automatically unpacked the { zip | rar | arj } on a temp directory. Then the content of the archive were automatically checked for virii with *MANY* anti-virus like MacAfee, FProt and MSAV (if the BBS were DOS-based). If the archive passed the test, it was made available to download by other user. Then, the temp directory was cleaned.