Ever wonderd how Microsoft IT copes with the large quantities of unwanted e-mail (a.k.a. spam) and malware-infected messages in its inbound Internet e-mail traffic?

Well you’re in luck because Microsoft IT Showcase have uploaded a paper which documents how Microsoft IT uses Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 technologies, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, and third-party solutions to both reduce the quantity of spam routed through the corporate messaging infrastructure by filtering at the gateway layer and then remove the threats in remaining messages posed by viruses, worms, and their common distribution vectors, such as file attachments.

Situation

• The growing prevalence of spam, viruses, and other malware sent through Internet e-mail has placed a large burden on the enterprise messaging environment, threatening to overwhelm messaging resources.
• More importantly, failure to manage these threats can put the enterprise messaging environment, and possibly the entire enterprise network, at risk for security violations.

Solution

• To manage the influx of spam and malware, Microsoft IT uses a multilayered approach, minimizing the amount of e-mail allowed past the outermost edge of the network.
• Microsoft IT employs multiple scanning and filtering processes to remove spam and malware while minimizing false positives. The multiple technologies for managing this process in Exchange Server 2003 SP2 simplify the process for messaging administrators.

Benefits

• Scanning for spam at the outermost edge of the network significantly reduces the amount of messaging content to be processed and stored internally.
• Removing attachments and scanning for malware before delivery to mailboxes dramatically reduce user exposure to these threats.
• Additional scanning at the client level further reduces the threats of malware and adverse effects on employee productivity, such as time required to sort through and delete spam.

Download the full word document or slideshow here.