The Messaging Architects
GWGuardian
Virginia Employment Commission uses GWGuardian with GroupWise® to eliminate junk e-mail and undesirable attachments.
"The Virginia Employment Commission relies on GroupWise every day, and we've made it even more secure and stable with GWGuardian."
Background
The Messaging Architects help Novell customers extend the boundaries of electronic communication and collaboration in organizations of all sizes. A true messaging firewall that can support up to 10,000 mailboxes on a single server, GWGuardian offers multi-layered anti-virus and anti-spam technology in a single, self-managed and automatically updated solution.
"The Messaging Architects is focused on delivering enterprise messaging solutions for all platforms," says Charles Nguyen-Huu, Marketing Guru for The Messaging Architects. "The company has long been a member of DeveloperNet®, and we recently became a Premier-level member to take advantage of Novell's enhanced development services." Pierre Chamberland, CEO of The Messaging Architects notes, "We take full advantage of Novell support, tools and resources in creating our products. Our GWGuardian+ AV Enterprise Edition, GWGuardian AV Academic Edition, and GWGuardian solutions have all passed Novell's YES, Tested and Approved™ certification process."
Situation Before The Messaging Architects Solution
The Virginia Employment Commission provides workforce services to promote maximum employment and enhance the economic stability of the State of Virginia. As with most networked organizations, e-mail is a critical application. Protecting the messaging system and users from viruses, worms and spam e-mail traffic is no longer simply a good idea, it's a matter of everyday survival. Viruses and worms have the ability to disable or disarm AV software, contain key-logging Trojans that can be used to steal confidential information, or manipulate infected mail servers. In addition, junk e-mail can quickly overwhelm an unprotected system, undermining employee productivity and consuming resources.
"We don't let hackers or spammers misuse our GroupWise system resources, we fight back," says David Thompson, LAN systems engineer for the Virginia Employment Commission. "We run GroupWise 6 and support over 700 mailbox users, and we will soon add 1500 more users currently using Outlook and Sendmail. Our messaging traffic is increasing by the day, and our department is responsible for enforcing the organization's Internet and content policies, such as restricting access to pornographic materials or sites that are not business related."
"We were using a competing anti-virus and content filtering product," explains Thompson. "But we experienced problems with the previous product's stability and couldn't resolve the server crashes, which also interrupted our e-mail service. What's more, human factors are always underplayed in product presentations. No administrator wants to constantly tweak settings to avoid false positives or control new sources of spam or viruses. Our monthly message volume is approximately 46,000 incoming and 29,000 outgoing. We needed an automated, stable approach for proactively managing our GroupWise messaging traffic."
Situation After The Messaging Architects Solution
"We looked around for a replacement solution and selected GWGuardian in order to block spam before it reaches the GroupWise Internet Agent (GWIA). We got GWGuardian up and running in just a few minutes and it has worked flawlessly ever since," notes Thompson. "GWGuardian's administration console provides complete control to manage anti-spam security and define custom mail filtering scripts. We can even write spam filters and deploy them at the click of a button. GWGuardian also provides automatic updates to its own Sieve scripts which are compiled by a global team of e-mail security experts."
GWGuardian includes an implementation of the Sieve language, an IETF RFC standard for mail filter scripting. Sieve is tailor-made for mail filtering, allowing administrators to block the most sophisticated spammers – without cutting off important business e-mail.
"We like the product so much that we are now planning to upgrade to the GWGuardian Enterprise version, which provides anti-virus protection powered by McAfee*," says Thompson. GWGuardian virus protection includes scanning of inbound and outbound messages for known and unknown viruses, worms and trojans. When infected files are detected, they are cleaned, isolated, or deleted. GWGuardian also provides administrator-defined notification messages and the options to move infected files to quarantine and block attachments by extension. In addition, GWGuardian's virus definition files, content filters, RBL lists and anti-spam scripts are automatically monitored and updated over a secure link, ensuring the highest possible protection of messaging infrastructure.
Conclusion
"GWGuardian keeps our GroupWise system from having to process unwanted messages and provides better stability and quality of service to our end users," concludes Thompson. "Our administrative staff is also happier because the product generates almost no false positives. Plus, we've received exceptional support from The Messaging Architects, who've answered all our questions and responded quickly to our suggestions for enhancements. The Virginia Employment Commission relies on GroupWise every day, and we've made it even more secure and stable with GWGuardian."
For More Information
The Messaging Architects
http://www.messagingarchitects.com
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