Z E N e w s - Issue 4: Protecting Exchange

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Why does Exchange need protecting?

In this week’s article we look at protecting your Microsoft Exchange server from virus threats, spam and we examine reporting and monitoring options.

For most businesses today, e-mail is the "mission- critical" communications tool, which allows their people to produce their best results.

Microsoft Exchange is a popular e-mail server which integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook to provide efficient access and sharing of e-mail, calendars and contacts. Moreover remote users can access their mailbox via a familiar interface using Outlook Web Access from a web browser.

However for all its strengths, Microsoft Exchange does have some weaknesses:

Exchange does not include spam-filtering.

Exchange does not screen e-mails for viruses, which means that many organisations rely on their desktop anti-virus product to detect e-mail viruses once the infected attachment has reached the user’s desktop.

Exchanges’ e-mail logging options are not easy-to-use, which makes troubleshooting e-mail delivery issues with remote mail servers difficult.

Because of overheads, logging of e-mail traffic in Exchange is only recommended on a short-term basis for troubleshooting purposes; which means that if you want to maintain a record of all e-mail traffic for audit purposes, Exchange is not the best option.

The Solution

The solution is to deploy MDaemon as a front-end "gateway" to your Microsoft Exchange server.

MDaemon operates with low overheads and can run as a service on the same computer as your Exchange server.

MDaemon has robust security capabilities with anti-virus screening, anti-spam filtering with Bayesian Learning, content filtering, blacklists and whitelists, and reverse DNS lookups.

MDaemon includes LDAP functionality for contact screening. This means that messages that are being sent to invalid recipients can be deleted before they reach the Exchange server.

The reporting and logging capabilities of MDaemon are extensive and mean that any mail delivery issues can be investigated locally rather than having to rely on your ISP or the other parties’ technical support.

Because MDaemon has low overheads, all e-mail traffic can be logged for audit purposes without affecting the performance of the Exchange server.

The anti-virus screening provided by MDaemon means that email-borne viruses can be detected at the server and either cleaned (or deleted) before they reach the user’s desktop.

Moreover, as MDaemon has its own anti-virus engine this means that e-mail viruses (these days the most prevalent type) will be subjected to two independent virus scanners (MDaemon and your existing desktop virus scanning product)

Implementation

Unlike other gateway solutions which charge based on the number of e-mail users (or seats), MDaemon is licensed for a fixed price of $725ex which includes all updates for 1 year. (2 year subscriptions are also available.) Renewals after the first year are only $313ex per annum.

As this is a sophisticated solution we recommend professional installation to ensure correct functionality. ZEN are able to implement this solution for a fixed cost of $500ex ($400ex with our special deal).

Special Deal!

Convinced of the merits of our gateway solution?

Mention this newsletter and we'll drop 10% off the normal cost of MDaemon Pro and MDaemon Anti-virus.

And if you need help in implementation, we'll drop 20% off our normal rates.

To take advantage of this offer simply call us before 13 April and mention this newsletter.

For further information about this or any of our articles please contact us or send us an e-mail.

Comparison with Hosted Services
A number of companies are now offering hosted spam/virus filtering, whereby they act as a gateway. Whilst these solutions typically perform quite well, we feel the major advantages of the solution proposed here are:

Cost: as hosted services typically charge per user, medium and above size business will typically find a hosted solution more expensive, particularly so in the second and later years.

Missing e-mails are much harder to detect with most hosted services. With the extensive logging in MDaemon it is possible to easily review the logs to find out exactly why that important client's e-mail was never received....

E-mail monitoring: Because e-mail and Internet systems should be used strictly as business communications tools, many businesses now maintain an audit log of all e-mail correspondence to maintain the company's professional reputation and image, employee productivity and to prevent inappropriate disclosure of confidential information. Because hosted services typically only screen incoming e-mail, they do not provide the ability to maintain an audit log of all e-mail traffic.