Remember this post I made back on November 10, 2006 (see below)? A lot of list members have since e-mailed asking if I ever found someone and how it was coming along. In follow-up to those same folks on the list we finally completed upgrade to our Declude installs from 1.82 to 4.3.23. Once again (since Scott left) I am comfortable with controlling Spam using Declude. We remain at IMail 8.22 until such time I feel comfortable their Web Mail and other Web based security/functionality issues get resolved.
I want to thank those who specifically responded offering help (Darrell with Invariant, Dave Doherty, and Matt with Mail Pure), and also all the folks on this list who have provided help to me over the years. All of you are the best in the business and I would never have remained a Declude client for the last 5 years without same. Folks like Sandy, John, Len, Doug, Andy, Darin (and may others) who make posts make it possible to keep learning moving forward. Darrell with Invariant (http://www.invariantsystems.com) was the first to respond and offered his help free of charge. I was not looking for free help, but a consultant to work with. Regardless, I decided to take him up on his offer and insisted to compensate something for his time. He never did give me a fee or schedule, so I came up with one on my own and he was worth every penny and more!!! One of my major concerns was losing the ability reviewing False Positives (as I was using the old Spam Review). That came to rest when I discovered his Invariant False Positive Review software product. It is the best tool I have ever used and loaded with all kinds of features like on-the-fly reporting to Sniffer, Filter file updating, DNS lookups, and a lot more. If anyone needs a cool tool to review your held Spam and built-in tools to manage same, I highly recommend this FP Review product. Invariant also has several other good products I strongly recommend including invURIBL which is also helping us tag Spam. Darrell never really pushed his products on us, but rather kept to helping me better understand our E-mail System, how best to use and configure Declude, Sniffer, Filters, Weighting, and more. I made the decision to purchase his products without pressure. In summary, based on number of servers, accounts, and volume, it was not cost-effective for us to farm out our Spam filtering. I strongly considered doing this and it may be the most appropriate for other companies with different circumstances. I needed to learn how to manage on our own with what limited resources we had in place. Darrell was very sensitive to this, our CPU usage, and other items. As we grow, we may need to implement a Gateway server like IMGate, Alligate, ASSP, etc.(all of which I am studying) , but for now we are hanging in there (about 60K messages daily on one server, 40K on another, across multiple domains, about 3500 users). I am also open to other products like MX Guard, but we have invested so much in Declude it is difficult to switch at this point. We are stopping lots more Spam thanks to Darrell's assistance and strongly recommend him to anyone needing an E-mail server consultant. Anyone interested in details, please e-mail me off-list and be glad to share. Seasons greetings and peace to all! Thanks. -Don CompBiz.Inc. 407-322-8654 ----- Original Message ----- From: Don <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Schreiner To: declude.junkmail@declude.com Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 6:36 AM Subject: [Declude.JunkMail] Seeking IMail Expert and Consultant for Hire Dear Declude List, I am seeking an IMail/Declude/Sniffer, etc. expert for consultation and hire via telephone, e-mail, and remote Terminal Server. Please contact me off list if interested in helping teach this old dog new tricks. Below is some info about our situation. With ongoing issues, bugs, and version changes (both IMail and Declude), we need help with not only decision making moving forward, but the best configurations for our clients filtering Spam and Virus'. All our licenses and SA's are up-to-date, but we remain at IMail 8.22 and Declude 1.82. Our license renewal dates are forthcoming for IMail in December, and Declude next year. Product knowledge with great results of other technologies like MXGuard, invURIBl, ASSP, ClamAV, Log Analyzers, etc. is desired, as we are certainly would consider if better alternatives can be proven. I recently tried implementing MXGuard and invURIBL with limited success and reverted back to our original set-up, as it seemed to be catching more Spam. Not sure it was these products fault, but perhaps myself in the set-up? We have been using IMail/Declude since early version 4.0 days and with mostly acceptable filtering results until these last few years, and growing worse in recent months with .gif and stock spams. I currently need some concentrated help with set-up, upgrades, and guidance. While we are a small hosting and Coldfusion Dev firm (about 100 hosting clients since the early 90's), we also work with a lot of churches and the recent Spam getting through is not acceptable. Our current issues are not with performance/volume of e-mail as we only process about 30-40k messages in/out daily. We want to upgrade to our licensed latest version of IMail (and Declude), but "any" existing IMail and Web Mail issues would not be acceptable to our clients (i.e. slowness, miscalculated bytes, etc.) Our current set-up and tools are as follows: -Windows 2000 Advanced Server -IMail 8.22 / Declude 1.82 / Sniffer -SQL 7 Database (separate server and do not use IMail registry) -F-Prot -BlackIce (use for intrusion detection and tar-pitting dictionary attacks) -The old Spam Review to ID False Positives I hope some folks here are interested and no problem reimbursing for same. Again, please contact me off list if interested. Thanks. -Don --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com.
