[itdiscuss] SPAM - re-visited

[Thompson, Ken]

A hosted service (as I see has already been mentioned by several) is probably your best option. Anything you place "in house" is going to require effort on the part of someone to manage it (I can't speak to what the hosted setups require as we've never done this).

Mission to the World uses layers for spam management. An Astaro Firewall has anti-virus / anti-spam features and does a great job as an initial point of entry. The system that does the most anti-spam work is a Barracuda spam server.  Between these 2 systems we have pretty much zero spam going to users desktops. The annual costs for these systems is very inexpensive compared to managed solutions like Postini. However, they do require some time on the part of IT staff (like maybe 15 minutes or so each day).

Just our "two bits" on this question. The best thing of all would be for the Lord to strike all the servers that send spam dead. That would save us all a lot of time and money.

Hope you can find what you need!

Ken Thompson
Mission to the World

From: discuss-bounces at itdiscuss.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at itdiscuss.org] On Behalf Of Mark Seal
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 10:00 AM
To: discuss at itdiscuss.org
Subject: [itdiscuss] SPAM - re-visited


Hey Guys,

I need some advice. I am not a trained IT person. I'm a Facilities Manager who is responsible for IT. I know enough to be dangerous and that's about it. I've seen the discussions about SPAM lately and it is a big problem here. We are currently using GFI MailEssentials 12 at the direction of our IT support company. It does a great job of keeping SPAM out of our Inbox and putting it in the Junk E-Mail folder. However, that Junk E-Mail folder currently has to be looked at by each individual user to see if there is any good mail in it. As you know, the kind filth that comes through even the subject line is not what I want entering my mind, not to mention a lady having to see it. I'm being told that the only other option is to not allow the Junk Mail to go to the individual user, but to another "administrator" box for lack of a better term. Then either someone has to manage that box to see if there is anything good in there and to add requests to the white list or have the system delete anything it considers SPAM. Of course there is a risk with that because something that is actually good could get deleted. Then the user has to notify the administrator to add something to the white list. Am I being given correct advice?

We have about 60 workstations, so you can see that this would take up significant time to administer. Time I don't have. I know we need a dedicated IT person, but it's just not in the budget yet. Any good words from you guys?

Mark Seal
Facilities Director
New Hope Baptist Church
551 New Hope Rd.
Fayetteville, GA    30214
marks at newhopebc.org<mailto:marks at newhopebc.org>
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