March 2003

Spam Filter and AntiVirus Solution to be Implemented Posted Wednesday, March 19, 2003 by jeremy

In order to address customer requests as well as improve network security, MOREnet is prepared to deploy the RAV (Reliable Anti-Virus) spam and anti-virus engine for managed customer e-mail during the week of March 24-28, 2003. Spam: - Spam will be marked, but not rejected. MOREnet System Administration has determined through previous experiments and attending the recent Spam Conference at MIT that the cost of blocking legitimate e-mail outweighs the advantage of rejecting spam. - Customers can use their e-mail client's filtering feature to move e-mail marked as spam into a separate folder (e.g., Trash). However, please note that e-mail may occasionally be marked incorrectly as spam -- a false positive. Please check the subject and sender lines of e-mail marked as spam prior to final erasure. Antivirus: - Viruses and other malware can infect a system by means other than e-mail. Customers should have local file server and desktop anti-virus tools in place and should keep the virus signature file up to date. - The anti-virus scanner discards well-known viruses (e.g., Klez, etc.) outright, with no notice to the sender or recipient, though the discard is logged. - The scanner attempts to clean and deliver e-mail infected with less common viruses. If cleaning fails, the e-mail is discarded (and the discard is logged). For the time being, only incoming e-mail will be scanned for viruses and spam. Another announcement will be posted when scanning of outgoing mail begins.