IS&T Announces New Spam Quarantine Service

04/22/2009

Spam Quarantine is a new anti-spam service for IS&T's traditional (IMAP) email service, using Symantec's Brightmail AntiSpam. Based on feedback from the community, an increase in requests for help, and early test results from the Microsoft Exchange Pilot, it was evident that the current spam-screening service was less effective, especially with the increase in malware and phishing outbreaks.

How Does It Work?
The Spam Quarantine service scans all incoming email before delivering it to your inbox, identifies potential spam using a series of tests, and filters them to the Spam Quarantine server. Once a day, you receive an email with a daily summary of all the messages filtered to Spam Quarantine. You have the choice to view, release, or delete the messages that are stored; if no action is taken after seven days the messages will automatically be purged. You can also customize your Spam Quarantine settings on the Web at the Symantec Brightmail Gateway.

How to Get It
IS&T will be transitioning the email community from the current Spam Screening to Spam Quarantine over the next couple of months. Current MIT email users are encouraged to enable Spam Quarantine in their personal settings at https://nic-too.mit.edu/cgi-bin/spamscreen. Once you enable Spam Quarantine, IS&T recommends turning off Junk Mail filtering in your email programs to avoid potential conflicting results and prevention of your allow/deny lists from working as intended.

Testimonials
Testimonials shared by current users include the following:

"The Symantec Brightmail Web Gateway is very easy to use and to configure…"

"Overall, I like the service - particularly the ability to block emails in certain languages, which we didn't have before."

"I love this product. In testing it caught 100% of my spam (436 messages) and zero legit mail."

"I really like the summary each day. It is very easy to read through quickly and I do not have to delete anything since it will delete automatically after 7 days."

Transition
IS&T will work closely with community representatives to enable a smooth transition, and thanks IT Partners and early adopters who assessed this new service and provided support and guidance throughout its implementation and release.

For more information on Spam Quarantine and how it works, see the Spam Quarantine for IMAP page.