3 Top Built-in Anti-Spam Features in Exchange 2016

The Ms Exchange Server has a host of Anti-Spam features built into it that do a great job of  protecting users from spam and malicious emails

The in-built anti-spam features present in MS Exchange are useful for protecting your mail servers from any unwanted mails or spam. These features do not entirely do away with all the spam or junk coming your way, but certainly help in reducing their numbers. Those who want to spam your account will never use just one means to do it; spammers usually make use of multiple several different techniques to spam your account. This is the main reason why Exchange makes use of a multilayered, in-built anti-spam system. The Transport Agents and in-built anti-spam agents are the main protectors against spam in MS Exchange. Given below are the main anti-spam agents present in different locations of MS Exchange.

1. On Mailbox Servers

This should be enabled if there is no support for Edge Transport Server in the organization or if, other anti-spam filtering agents are not applied to incoming messages. There are priority numbers assigned to all anti-spam agents. The greater the number the lesser priority it will get and lesser the number greater the priority. Therefore, any agent with priority number 1, will act before the agent with priority number 5. However, which agent gets to act first on a message also depends on their order of registration in the pipeline. If an agent with greater priority number is registered first, it will get to act before an anti-spam agent with lesser priority number registered later.

2. On Edge Transport Servers

If the Edge Transport in your organization has been installed within the network perimeter, it will enable all anti-spam agents in the mailbox server by default. The edge transport server includes multiple other anti-spam agents, which are:

• Connection Filtering Agent
• Recipient Filter Agent
• Attachment Filtering Agent

3. Anti-spam Stamps

These are used for applying on messages, and are then used by anti-spam agents, they can be viewed for help in diagnosing spam related problems.

While applying either of the above mentioned anti-spam agents, you have to make sure that they are not applied too rigorously that they block even the important incoming messages. As an Exchange user, you need to have a proper strategy for implementing these anti-spam agents for best results. This strategy is supposed to be a mix of rigor and ease. So that it avoids spam and allows important mails. Given below are a few tips to help you create a strategy.

• If any of the filtering agent has already identified a spam message, simply reject it instead of quarantining it and applying anti-spam stamps. Once the messages are identified by default filtering settings, don’t spend more time on them.

• By monitoring effectiveness/ strength of anti-spam features in current configuration, you can decide whether to increase or decrease their effectiveness. You should begin by reducing false positives in default settings, and then proceed to increasing or decreasing effectiveness of settings on the basis of spam attacks being faced by the organization.

One must note that even the best anti-spam and security tools cannot offer a fool proof guarantee against determined intrusion attempts and one must always keep a tool handy that can recover Exchange data in the event of a breach or data corruption incident.

Author Introduction:

Van Sutton is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including outlook recovery and bkf recovery software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com