Evaluating Anti Spam Software

As an important business decision, an anti-spam protection for email servers to the next step is the implementation to fit on an evaluation of available solutions on the market. In this post I'll describe a high-level approach for the implementation of further anti-spam in your organization.
Explore products available

If your organization has no awareness of existing anti-spam solutions on the market, then the first step to finding what is available. It's as simple as adopting a number of Google searches for terms such as trade "spam" or "Exchange anti-spam" (if you use Microsoft Exchange Server for example). You can also discover the products that are listed in articles and advertisements in banners on popular web technologies, web sites specifically dedicated to a business crowd.

Another approach is simply to go to ask your contacts in other companies you know to understand what they use if they had any comments on a fast to make their fortunes with the solution they have implemented .

Once you have a list of products you can learn a bit more written about them to find online reviews.
Suppliers Contact

After some of the available products, please contact the vendor for more information on product availability for the assessment of all local permits and pre-sales support they offer, either directly or through an affiliate. Often a claimant is more than happy to send representatives to your office to discuss their products and make even a demonstration.

pre-sales support is very valuable during the test phase and evaluation, so that any problems you encounter with the inexperience of the new product can be explained by experts.
Test phase

Before each assessment must be conducted in your production environment, you have a number of tests in an isolated test environment. This test will help you familiarize yourself with the installation and configuration of the product and gives you the chance of complications or problems that you see as incompatibility with other software you need to fix your servers.
Evaluation Phase

If you are you satisfied that the test product will not harm your environment, you can install it in a production environment and begin a more thorough process.Since you probably have a trial license can expire after 30 days or so and a plan to eliminate a product for others deemed that you should think about what production systems in the evaluation. To reduce the impact on other servers that you are considering a dedicated server for the assessment phase should be.

For example, time-limited evaluation licenses installed Microsoft Windows Server and Exchange Server hardware replacement parts or in a VMware environment, and installing anti-spam, then the temporary server. This prevents the subsequent evaluation of products of production systems.
functions to assess

A commercial antispam solution has many features which are useful for organizations, and should be considered carefully.

Integration - is the product fits perfectly into your e-mail (eg Microsoft Exchange) and directory (eg Microsoft Active Directory Server)? Is there a need for a standalone server running? Is to use Active Directory authentication, or a proper authentication system?

Methods of detection - is the detection of certain products, such as content filtering, block lists, filtering and Bayes RBL services?

Quarantine store - and not the product of elements in the isolated storage file system, a user database or a standard database such as Microsoft SQL Server? Do you have a license server database must be purchased separately for this computer? Do you want a specific permit backup agent to save the SQL databases?

End User Controls - must end customer self-service access to the quarantine? Users can configure their own personal block lists and white lists?

Reporting - should not be reported to a particular application of the console, or can be run from a browser? Perhaps compared to non-computer without administrator rights for the entire anti-spam system can be accessed?

anti-spam frameworks - the product supports the anti-spam frameworks such as SPF, DKIM or Sender?

License - How the product is licensed per server or per user mailbox? Is there a license for a single user, no matter how many emails?

Scalability - the product can be managed centrally, or it is installed on bridges over an e-mail for large networks?

Ease of use - how the product configuration and data are secure and how easy it is to recover if the server goes down anti-spam?
Completion

When spam solutions for your company plan, it is important to take time to evaluate possible solutions. Remember these simple steps:

- More information on products available on the market
= Call your service needs and access to demonstrations and pre-sales support to
discuss
= Run a test phase for the evaluation phase
= Test of licenses for Windows, Exchange and the anti-spam software with the
hardware or replacing a VMware environment to the impact on production to reduce
- Assess all functions in depth and consistent for different products

increase with the implementation of an appropriate assessment of anti-spam products can significantly reduce the risk that the product, implement the best solutions for your business.