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Gordano Upgrades Anti-Spam And Anti-Virus Features
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2004-11-02
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Gordano has released upgrades focusing on Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus in the Gordano Messaging Suite (GMS).
"The Anti-Spam upgrades have strengthened Gordano's arsenal to help protect enterprises from Internet threats, including malicious downloads, blended threats and risks posed by mobile computing," says Gordano Sales Director Lisa Kirman. "The changes are consistent with our philosophy of executing at the server level, while still giving as much control as is sensible to the end user," she continues.
"I have found Gordano's products and service to be excellent," says Tadeusz Atanowski, Network Administrator for Merriam-Webster, Inc. "Their technology and ASUS (Anti-Spam Update Service) has already slashed the amount of spam getting through our server(s) to virtually zero. I expect the new release to further strengthen our defenses. Gordano's support is truly diligent, too, with very comprehensive follow ups."
New Features include:
Scored Restricted Words (Scored Rwords)
Allows a system administrator to define a flexible set of words or phrases, with a score assigned to each, so that spam can be detected regardless of the precise wording. This means that variations in spam streams can still be detected reliably.
Gordano now provides a default set of words via the Anti-Spam Update Service (ASUS) which is constantly updated. Administrators can augment this with their own compilations. This new facility means that administrators will be able to catch a high proportion of spam 'out-of-the-box' -- with a negligible false positive rate.
System Bayesian
Gordano introduced Bayesian Filtering at the server level last fall, which enabled individual users to customize what they consider to be legitimate email and what they consider to be spam. Gordano has now extended this to the system as a whole, allowing a single Bayesian filter to categorize spam for the whole system.
A common concern with Bayesian anti-spam systems is the perceived management overhead and learning procedure. GMS Anti-Spam (AS) allows end users to report spam easily to the sys admin, with the option of an automatic learning mode. In this case, no administrator input is required at all.
A default dictionary is supplied and automatically updated via the ASUS. This can reduce the administrative burden even further.
Security & Management Improvements
A new 'stealth mode' allows spam, once detected, to be silently discarded. This prevents spammers from being alerted to new mechanisms and therefore reduces the likelihood of their modifying messages to try and bypass defenses.
GMS Anti-Spam now provides an even higher level of protection against malformed MIME messages, by embracing tests such as those used by the National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC). Techniques involving malformed MIME are commonly used by spammers to bypass defenses.
GMS now provides an additional option to format logs that can be used by many third party reporting tools. W3C logging is supported in the web server, collaboration WebMail and administrator GUI servers. This will allow administrators to track their server usage and identify bottlenecks. Additionally, customers running their websites on the inbuilt GMS Webserver will be able to track customer paths through the site and analyse visitor behaviour.
User Quarantine
System administrators are rightly reluctant to be burdened with AS management and tuning tasks. A new user quarantine technique in this release allows spam to be delivered to the end user in such a way that they can decide how it should be processed. It can be deleted - or quarantined for later review or retrieval. Any undetected spam that passes through to a user's inbox can be reported to the admin and, in 'learning mode', the Bayesian filters dynamically updated. This feature also allows GMS to be used 'out-of-the-box' as a low cost, easy to implement and highly effective spam identification engine at the boundary of an existing corporate network.
Integration with GMS Webmail empowers users to report spam at the click of a button and to tune their junk mail filters very finely indeed - for instance, bypassing trusted senders. These might be from their personal or system address books or even Outlook contacts where used in conjunction with GMS Collaboration.
SMS - SMS is included with GMS Mail, GMS Webmail and GMS Communication Server
Users can now send short text messages to cell phones by using a traditional mail client or GMS Webmail. This facility is cell phone service provider independent, allowing delivery to any network anywhere in the world. GMS Webmail users benefit from the tight integration with the inbuilt address book that can contain cell phone numbers. Trial and evaluation of this feature directly from Gordano is now available.
About the Author:
SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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