News

Sybari Updates Spam Protection Software

• By Scott Bekker
• October 27, 2004

The previous version of Sybari Advanced Spam Defense put a junk mail folder for each user into Exchange. The biggest architectural change in the new Sybari Advanced Spam Defense 4.0 is to take that folder out of Exchange and allow administrators to put the spam file share somewhere else.

"What we were hearing back from customers was, 'It would be really nice if we could keep that out of the mail system,'" says Peter Eicher, product manager of Sybari's spam business.

For individual users, Sybari keeps management of the junk folder within the e-mail client to an extent. Once a day, or more often if the user wants, an e-mail will arrive with a digest showing subject line, sender, date and time of all the junk e-mails. A link within the digest e-mail takes the user to a Web-based interface where the user can delete messages, release the message to his inbox or approve the message, which both releases it and allows similar messages in the future.

One other major change in ASD 4.0 is giving administrators the ability to scan for spam to non-existent users.

Eicher says it helps with the important issue of stopping spam to former employees. "You shut down the mailbox and they still get 300 spams a day. The mail server now generates a non-deliverable back to the spammer," he says.

Another advantage of scanning for non-existent users is in blocking directory attacks by spammers. "Now we scan that stuff, and we allow you to quarantine it or just throw it away prior to it getting into the mail system," Eicher says.

Advanced Spam Defense, which runs at the perimeter without much integration with Exchange, is one of three anti-spam products from Sybari. The company's other high-end product is Advanced Spam Manager. ASM integrates tightly with Sybari's Antigen for Exchange or for SMTP, which are anti-virus products. On the low end, Sybari offers Sybari Spam Manager as a content-filtering add-on for Antigen.