Virus scanning for e-mail

[gconspiracy]

I have a potential client who asked to have all of their incoming and outgoing e-mail scanned for viruses. I know that spam filtering is available for all e-mail traffic (via SpamAssassin). Is something similar available for virus protection? If Vortech doesn't offer such a service, can anyone recommend another third-party e-mail gateway service that DOES provide such a service?

Thank you.
Steve

[Brangwyn]

I would reccomend to your customer that they consider running the virus scanner locally, that way they have the assurance that it's working and also know it's always up to date etc (assuming they update it often).

Executable content is blocked to stop microsoft worms from spreading. Thats not to say your email will be virus free, people can still send you word docs with macro virus's or zipped viruses... Either way, a virus scanner on your local machine would probably catch more than a server scan would do. If we did server scan, it would be as quick and resources free as possible (No unarchiving, etc.) We dont do this at this time, we feel the executable block is currently sufficient.

[albatroz]

What about Spam Assassin?
Is it installed on Hsphere.cc email servers?

Yes, but SpamAssassin doesn't scan for viruses.

[gconspiracy]

I thought I'd follow up this thread with the solution I presented to my client in case any of you encounter a similar request in the future:

I evaluated a few different e-mail gateway providers that provided advanced spam filtering and virus scanning features. I ended up selecting E-mail Sifter (www.emailsifter.com) mainly due to price (about $1.20/month a mailbox, WITH MAIL HOSTING as opposed to the $6 a mailbox being offered by competitors). Most of these services can either act as a passthrough gateway (where the mailbox is still hosted by, say, Vortech) or they can provide e-mail hosting as well (for a bit more, of course, though in my case, the difference was only about $.10/month per mailbox).

As an aside, I should mention that I was impressed with another company, www.erado.com, which I may consider for clients with fewer mailboxes (they run about $6/month per mailbox with e-mail hosting). Their services seemed more feature rich than E-mail Sifter and their proprietary spam filter has received good press. Since my client has about 100 mailboxes, the Erado solution was too pricey for my client to stomach.

Hope this information helps.
<steviej />

[QuickStart]

Check out Bright Networks. www.brightnetworks.com. Speak with Alex Willis awillis@brightnetworks.com.

[Curt]

If at some point you find you want the top-of-the-line service, check out www.messagelabs.com. I haven't used them personally, but all accounts are that they're the best by far. Unfortunately I don't know the pricing, but it's safe to assume it's at the higher end of the scale. Like "they" say though, you get what you pay for.