In an effort to help manage the email being received by COCC from internet sources, ITS implemented an email gateway during April and May 2004.
What happens to email messages that are infected with a virus?The COCC email gateway will automatically delete all known virus messages so that they will not appear in your inbox.
Although it is still possible to receive a virus in your email due to new viruses being released, this new system should greatly reduce the amount of junk virus email that is received and as a result keep our inboxes substantially cleaner.
For more virus related information click here.
What happens to SPAM?Deleting email suspected of being SPAM is a difficult topic due to the risk of losing important email. Therefore COCC has taken a cautious approach to minimize the risk of data loss while still trying to improve the SPAM situation at COCC. The COCC email firewall is currently configured to block all incoming email from known spammers (Spamhaus) as well as block email that is received and known to be SPAM based upon a wide range of rules which are built in to the email firewall.
October 2007 UpdateUnfortunately new SPAM methods are on the rise and as a result we are seeing more SPAM today than ever before. This is largely due to how there are more infected machines scattered around the internet being used to broadcast the SPAM. The result is that the matching schemes used to identify SPAM are not able to be as successful.
Although the device we use (discussed on this page) to catch SPAM has done very well for us, some of the latest types are not being caught. IT continues to work on this and hope that we will continue to find new ways to catch SPAM. We apologize for the pain this continues to cause. However, as a result we continue to ask for your help by avoiding dangerous messages.
What has this email gateway done for us?As of October 25, 2007 our email gateway has prevented over 57 million SPAM and Virus messages from entering COCC's email system.
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|
Total
(Since May 2004) |
Example Day
(10/25/07) |
|
Blocked: SPAM |
57,265,147 |
112,885 |
|
Blocked: Virus |
255,174 |
29 |
|
Quarantined |
5,320,636 |
1,528 |
|
Allowed |
10,468,722 |
11,134 |
|
Total Received |
73,338,025 |
125,576 |
Each day we block an average of 110,000 SPAM messages and only allow about 11,000 messages in to our campus email system.
Due to recent SPAM trends COCC is currently blocking all email that receives a SPAM rating of 7 or above. Use of this rating level has proven very safe with respect to blocking legitimate email however ITS continues to monitor our email closely in order to help catch any mistakenly blocked email.
More information
How do Viruses and SPAM email find me?
How is COCC protecting us?
COCC protection change history.
Barracuda Networks
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