Exchange Compatible Spam Filters?

DamienMcKenna asks: "At work our license for Symantec Brightmail is coming up for renewal and I'm looking for alternatives that will cooperate with Microsoft Exchange 2003. Brightmail hasn't worked consistently since we installed it last year, has a low success rate, the client plugin has been very unstable, and it takes up far too much server resources for what it does. Given that many of the appropriate software is not available for trial (you have to base decisions off their marketing materials), does anyone have recommendations on what to use instead? It must be Windows-based (UNIX/Linux/BSD is out of the question right now), and should have an easy to use administrative interface since not all of the IT staff are very technically minded. A working plugin for Outlook for client-level configuration would also be appreciated."

Comments

MailMarshal

[nmb3000]

The company I used to work at used MailMarshal for their spam/virus filtering. The interface was pretty good, but there was no Bayesian filters, nor client-side plugins (though I don't really thing they are that much of a bonus). It was pretty easy on resources; the Poweredge server we had never seemed to have much of a problem, and it was running IIS and MSSQL at the same time (it was a smaller business).

This was several years ago, and all those things, including a web interface and quarantines were supposed to be in the next version (and they've gone through some two or three versions since then).

Might be worth checking out anyway.

"Not technically minded?"

[W2k]

If your IT staff is not technically minded, you have bigger problems than SPAM. Maybe it's just me, but I was under the distinct impression that the foremost qualification necessary to join the IT staff of any self-respecting company is to be technically minded. What are those people doing there if they can't do their jobs?

What kind of a "company" is this? I guess it's too much to ask for a name.

Re:"Not technically minded?"

[crerwin]

Some organizations may not be able to pay the salaries that highly qualified IT people are looking for. This particularly happens with such places as school districts, which is unfortunate because school district networks usually have more malicious users than traditional corporate networks. School districts are also often forced to use Exchange/AD setups by less knowledgeable school boards. Not that this combination is unworkable, it just sometimes requires more babysitting and trouble spotting than more inherently secure infrastructures.

Whether the submitter is working for a school district or not, it does not help to berate his/her IT team. Perhaps they work for a non-profit organization working towards the greater good with a need for IT but without a budget to support it. Don't get me wrong, you make a valid point, but not a helpful one. Their spam filter situation can be changed, so let's focus on that.

Re:"Not technically minded?"

[GigsVT]

Don't you know the custom here? If you don't know the answer to a question, you attack the person asking it, or point out why they need to change their situation entirely to change the question into one you know the answer to. :)

ASSP

[GrigorPDX]

ASSP is an excellent, cross-platform, open source mail filter that is quite popular amongst my long-suffering Windows mail server admins. Perl-based and platform-agnostic it might be what you're looking for.

Non-Windows doesn't mean you can't use Exchange...

[dn15]

While you said it should be Windows-based, I wanted to make sure you are aware that you *can* have a Linux/BSD/Mac server filter spam and keep your Exchange server. It would just be a gateway that receives your mail, runs filters, and then sends the messages along to your Exchange server. Just something to think about. It would also mean your filters would not break as you upgrade your software, since it would be a separate machine from the one that runs Exchange.

Re:McAfree GroupShould with SpamKiller add-on

[perlionex]

Since we're on the topic of commercial distributions of SpamAssassin:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/CommercialWind ows

...and I know you're looking for easy-to-click distributions, but on the off-chance you (or somebody else reading this article) is looking for information on simply running SpamAssassin on Windows:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/UsingOnWindows

Why not use Exchange IMF?

[YU Nicks NE Way]

The IMF which ships as a part of E2K3 SP1 and later works well, and has the advantage of being free with Exchange.

IMF is the answer. Free, from MS, and effective

[malakai]

It's free, it's part of Exchange but shipped after the product.
See: here.

I used to fool a dedicated linux box and SpamAssassin. I tested out the IMF when it came out and for the spam my users see, it beat out how our SpamAssassin was configured.

It also integrates with exchange very closely and uses the new Spam Confidence Level header stuff.