Internet Monitoring and Spam:
Anti-SPAM Solutions: Barracuda, Surf Control

Email has undoubtedly become a key tool for communications among companies worldwide. With frequent virus attacks and the alarming rate that spam fills inboxes, email is quickly becoming a less efficient means of communication. In fact, predictions are that by 2009, there will be 228 billion spam messages each day, representing the vast majority of email traffic on the Internet. This is simply astounding and unacceptable. It's time to take control of spam!

Barracuda Spam Firewall Appliance: Overview

Affordable
Barracuda Networks designs and builds products not only for their power and ease of use, but also for their affordability. With no per user license fees, the Barracuda Spam Firewall is the most affordable enterprise-class spam and virus solution available. The Barracuda Spam Firewall is an integrated hardware and software solution for complete protection of your email server. It provides a powerful, easy to use, and affordable solution to eliminating spam and viruses from your organization by providing the following protection:

The Barracuda Spam Firewall protects your email server with twelve defense layers:

• Denial of Service and Security Protection
• Rate Control
• IP Reputation Analysis
• Sender Authentication
• Recipient Verification
• Virus Check
• Policy (User-specified rules)
• Spam Fingerprint Check
• Intent Analysis
• Image Analysis
• Bayesian Analysis
• Rule-based Scoring

The Barracuda Spam Firewall architecture optimizes the processing of each email to maximize performance and process millions of messages per day. Unlike software solutions, the Barracuda Spam Firewall reduces the load placed on the email server by off-loading both spam and virus filtering.

In addition, all Barracuda Spam Firewall models include essential outbound filtering techniques including attachment scanning, virus filtering, rate controls and encryption. These features help organizations to ensure that all outgoing email is legitimate and virus-free.

Easy to Use
The Barracuda Spam Firewall is an integrated hardware and software solution that has the power of an enterprise-class solution, and the ease-of-use and affordability that businesses of all sizes demand. With no software to install and no modifications required to existing email systems, installation of the Barracuda Spam Firewall is quick and easy. Once installed, the system administrator uses the intuitive web interface for monitoring and maintenance. With Barracuda Networks Energize Updates, the Barracuda Spam Firewall is continuously updated with the latest spam and virus definitions every hour keeping maintenance to the unit at a minimum and eliminating administrative overhead.

The Barracuda Spam Firewall includes all the features needed to eliminate your spam and completely protect your email server from all forms of attack. Email may be blocked, quarantined, tagged, or delivered based on the policies of the organization or the preferences of the individual user.

Protection Against Email-borne Threats
The Barracuda Spam Firewall provides comprehensive protection against the most current email-borne threats that can cripple your network if left unprotected. With our proprietary twelve-layer defense system, the Barracuda Spam Firewall optimizes performance of your email server while utilizing the following protections:

• Anti-spam.  Barracuda Spam Firewalls use the most comprehensive and advanced methods in the industry at detecting and filtering spam resulting in the lowest rate of false positives.
• Anti-virus.  By utilizing dual layer virus blocking, decompression of archives and file type blocking, the anti-virus engine in the Barracuda Spam Firewall provides complete virus protection.
• Anti-spoofing.  This technology prevents the use of forged or "spoofed" sender addresses on unsolicited email. The anti-spoofing feature also allows larger organizations to specify a list of IP addresses that are allowed to have a "From" address that appears from inside the organization to support multiple sites and multiple email servers.
• Anti-phishing.  The Barracuda Spam Firewall provides robust protection against phishing schemes which are often used to gather confidential information about an organization or its individual users.
• Anti-spyware.  (Attachments) - All attachments are scanned and any spyware executables are detected and eliminated immediately.
• Denial of Service Protection.  Rate controls are utilized to stop denial of service attacks as well as dictionary based spam attacks. These rate control systems are integrated and automatic in the Barracuda Spam Firewall. 

End-user Control Features
The Barracuda Spam Firewall contains numerous end-user features that allow for individual tuning and greatly enhance the accuracy of our spam filtering.

• User based filtering.  The Barracuda Spam Firewall can be configured to set spam policies by the end-user on an individualized basis or on a global corporate level.
• Individual Spam Scoring.  The individual spam scoring feature allows end-users to set their individual thresholds for spam tolerance providing personalized control over spam policies.
• Personal Allow and Block Lists.  The Barracuda Spam Firewall can be configured to allow end-users to control over individual allow and block lists which further reduces the chance of false positives.
• End-User Quarantine.  We provide the ability to setup quarantine mailboxes where users can direct questionable email for review. This greatly reduces the support load for large organizations.
• Digest Emails.  A daily email is sent to all end-users with a quarantine account summarizing the contents of their individual quarantine mailboxes. 

Simplified and Centralized Administration
The Barracuda Spam Firewall features an easy-to-use Web interface, making management and administration of the appliance easy and cost effective. The Web interface allows you to define, manage and control corporate email policies from one central place.

Logs and Graphical Reports
System administrators can view logs and generate graphical reports to provide visibility within the organization. The Barracuda Spam Firewall can generate reports on top  email users, top spam recipients, top spam senders, and more.

• No Per User Charges.  With the Barracuda Spam Firewall there are no per user charges so the system administrator no longer has to worry about keeping track of new accounts.
• Multiple Domains & Multiple Email Servers.  A single Barracuda Spam Firewall can be used for multiple email servers and for multiple domains resulting in lower administrative costs.