OT: Anyone use Barracuda Networks Spam Firewall?, ours is down, along with Barracuda support website and phone Options

[BigDBass]

Just wondering if any of the IT types here are using a Barracuda email firewall. We are, and normally love it, but this morning it stopped processing incoming mail and, frighteningly, the Barracudanetworks.com website is down and there is no answer on the phone... Anyone have a similar or different situation with their Barracuda today?

[KaptKaos]

Before I was a MArshal partner, I was a Content Technologoies partner (then Baltimore, now Clearswift). I haven't looked at the MIMEsweeper products in years. When I last looked at them, they had issues with throughput. We have a major entertainment company with over 16k users running through basically 2 mailmarshals at the gateway. They not only get over 500k mail per day, but it is very very attachment heavy. Nothing else that they tried could handle their mail volume.

As for Real Time Black Lists (RBLs), while they do work, they are also very very problematic. Many times, they have false positive problems where domains get on their lists because the RBLs do not properly check for open relays. And once you are on their lists, it is nearly impossible to get off of them. These are basically unmanned list servers with no accountability. If your domain gets onto an RBL, you can expect several days worth of work to get off of their list.

IMO the real test of a gateway solution, aside from volume, is the false positive rate and end user management. If you have a low false positive rate and the ability for end-users to release their own junk mail and manage their own white and black lists, then you are doing pretty good.

Additionally, we used to put product on the internal systems too, but after a few years of it, we found that those were really only used for HR purposes as the gateway really did most of the work.

Just my 2 cents after being in the content security space for about 8 years.

BTW: Is David Guyatt still with Clearswift?

[Steve Thacker]

Before I was a MArshal partner, I was a Content Technologoies partner (then Baltimore, now Clearswift). I haven't looked at the MIMEsweeper products in years. When I last looked at them, they had issues with throughput. We have a major entertainment company with over 16k users running through basically 2 mailmarshals at the gateway. They not only get over 500k mail per day, but it is very very attachment heavy. Nothing else that they tried could handle their mail volume.

As for Real Time Black Lists (RBLs), while they do work, they are also very very problematic. Many times, they have false positive problems where domains get on their lists because the RBLs do not properly check for open relays. And once you are on their lists, it is nearly impossible to get off of them. These are basically unmanned list servers with no accountability. If your domain gets onto an RBL, you can expect several days worth of work to get off of their list.

IMO the real test of a gateway solution, aside from volume, is the false positive rate and end user management. If you have a low false positive rate and the ability for end-users to release their own junk mail and manage their own white and black lists, then you are doing pretty good.

Additionally, we used to put product on the internal systems too, but after a few years of it, we found that those were really only used for HR purposes as the gateway really did most of the work.

Just my 2 cents after being in the content security space for about 8 years.

BTW: Is David Guyatt still with Clearswift?

Not sure on David Guyatt

I have very very few false positives with the 5.2 Mailsweeper. It is all a distributed design now and throughput is not an issue any longer. The RBL is no longer an issue either. The Receiver service is now a separate component and it has a section to whitelist/Safelist a known good sender, even if they are on a RBL. It also has PMM "Personal Message Manager" . Basically the users control their own mail. I just scan for bad images, profanity, etc.