Protecting the the IT infrastructure from Spam mails,Malicious codes ,Malwares is one of the important and challenging task and needs to be monitored always. There are different types of spam attack through which an user can try to crack the perimeter network of any organization and intrude to inject any kind of malicious codes or phishing emails. While the most widely used type of method for circulating SPAM is Email through which unwanted emails, more number of spam emails, reverse NDR attacks etc.,  are circulated by which the productivity of an organization will be adversely affected.

Its always better to have 2 step anti-spam filtering feature or even more in any organization to ensure that the spam never reaches our network especially the Messaging system.

Microsoft has built in Anti spam features which can be enabled from Exchange 2003 versions and they work perfectly fine and more accurate in filtering the spam emails. Its always recommended to have this feature enabled as a part of additional security along with additional spam configurations and settings  in an environment.

But we need to always ensure that we are aware of all the settings configured in the spam filtering in all levels in our organization as it can interrupt the end users in sending and receiving emails if this configuration is not correct.

I just happened to walk through one of the most recent version of additional  spam security feature from product SPAMfighter and was much impressed with all the Configurations, Options and user friendliness of the product r.

In this article lets walk through the installation and few functionalities of the product SPAMfighter Exchange Module.

What is SPAMfighter ?

It is an add-on to Exchange Server that fully integrates and offers anti spam protection.  It works with Exchange versions Exchange 200,2003,2007,2010 and 2013.

How Does it works ?

Spam Fighter administration is managed through web interface which is much user friendly and has more options to explore.

It works integrated fully with Microsoft Exchange Server. It creates its own security groups and user account in AD which integrates with Exchange servers. This will be easier for us to manage easier way in terms of policy management and having separate control over Spam Fighter. Also by using this we can designate an individual to take care of these tasks who has control only on this software.

Prerequisites 

There is no prerequisites required to install this software as i ran it from a member server ( Windows server 2008) . The only thing i noticed was it required install the Microsoft Visual C++ Run-time which it prompted for it and it found the software by its own and installed them which made my job simple.

Installation

The product can be downloaded from here

http://www.spamfighter.com/SPAMfighter/Product_SEM.asp

Its a 30 day trial version and should be downloaded on to Windows Servers.

The installation was pretty much standard as all the software does and it prompted me for the latest virus definition updates so i would not walk through the entire setup.

One interesting thing i found during the installation was it asked for user name and password for Spam Fighter administration and it automatically created respective AD account to integrate with the exchange modules.

Once the installation is done you can open up the web console through add or remove programs and select spam fighter and opens web console as below

Give the user name and password given during installation.

Was astonished to see more options

In addition to the administration part from the server end spam fighter has outlook add in as well which users can install and further customize filtering on their own.

It has good policies which can be filtered in various levels as shown below.

I can see policy defined for inbound,outbound and internal emails.

Also i could notice policy filter settings for user level too which is very good.

All the users can be modified individually as well.

Finally a statistics report can also be pulled over which shows up the graphical value of filtered emails as below.

Cost Factor

Like most of the  apps which integrate with exchange makes licensing cost per user the spam fighter also have licensing structure  cost per user  basis for one year. However the cost factor reduces very well for organizations more than 2500 users.

You can view the pricing list here

http://www.spamfighter.com/SPAMfighter/Payment_Choose_Product_SEM.asp

Conclusion 

Overall SPAMfighter product is much user friendly and latest version  has much effective cool new features which can be integrated with Exchange Servers  for better spam filtering.

Thanks 

Sathish Veerapandian 

MVP – Exchange Server