[Cialug] Notifications: SPAM Blocked

[Josh More]

Just clarifying some of Nate's points here:

1.  The Black Hole scenario.

With any managed service, the key is to learn how to use it.  I've
found that Postini has some excellent tools for determining why an email
was or was not blocked.  Their header analyzer is awfully nice to have.
. .  That said, there are always times when emails seem to just "vanish
into the ether" and the only way to trace it is to look at logs. 
Whether you're using a service or an appliance you may be blocked from
accessing the logs.  This is starting to change, but IMO neither the
service or appliance offerings give us deep enough transparency in this
respect.  That gets in the cost/benefit of the ease of normal use vs the
pain of occasional debugging.  That's a personal business decision.


2.  Postini / Google

Postini is not yet a Google company. They're just headed in that
direction.  </nit>


3.  Monoculture

This is certainly a concern, and I recommend that people set up
redundant mail paths if they need that type of high-availability.  That
said, email is NOT designed as an HA solution, and should not be used as
such.  Think of it as UDP, it's usually fast, but it can also be slow or
utterly absent, without warning.

If you need 100% reliable messaging, there are other solutions that are
better designed (and priced accordingly).



 

-Josh More, RHCE, CISSP, NCLP, GIAC 
 morej at alliancetechnologies.net 
 515-245-7701



>>> "Nathan C. Smith" <nathan.smith at ipmvs.com> 08/30/07 9:48 AM >>> 

> 
> Regardless of the solution you choose, be it a hosted managed
service
> like we use, or an appliance like Dave recommends, I think that
> important thing is to decide whether it's a core job function 
> for you to
> block spam.  If it's not, go with something that can be configured
to
> block 99% of what's out there, so you can focus on what is 
> core to you.
>

I agree with this sentiment, email *is not* our core competency,
however,
with regard to hosted services....

Some hosted services (like Postini now Google) are simply too big
(IMHO).
When they have issues it affects too many people.  Especially when
they
suffer an outage or a type of virus is successful in eluding them.  An
easy
case of too many eggs in one basket - and the old "monoculture"
concern.  Do
we need Google sifting through email looking for keywords even if they
claim
to be doing it anonymously?

Are the services a bit like a black hole?  Your message goes in,
somebody
asks why their message wasn't delivered.  Do you have any idea what
happened
after it went into the service?  Maybe some services have a means to
address
this now.

For the record, we use a Sonicwall (formerly Mailfrontier) email
software
these days.  It certainly stems the spam.  Let me know if you get a
bounced
spoof from me.

Spam sucks, email is broken.

-Nate

_______________________________________________
Cialug mailing list
Cialug at cialug.org
http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug