To Allow or Not Allow E-Mail Attachments?

Posted by Cliff on Thursday July 3, 2003 @03:17PM 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?"

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don't use Outlook by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-06 03:46 · Score: -1, Redundant

"Email virii" are really mostly "Outlook virii". Use an email client that is not susceptible (or better yet, a platform that virii don't work on).

Mozilla (Thunderbird), Eudora, etc. come to mind. Any Unix-like OS will be fairly safe against virii (Linux, *BSD, Solaris, OS X).

Of course there also Microsoft Office macro virii as well...

All these issues are mostly issues with Microsoft. If you're really serious about security you'll minimize your use of Microsoft products.

(This isn't to say that you'll eliminate your security problems; other OSes have other issues, but you eliminate a huge vector where 'attacks' can come in.)