Barracuda spam-filter.

[Brian Wallingford]

On Sat, 22 May 2004, W.D.McKinney wrote:

:We currently run and have run a Barracuda in front of our system for 6
:Months.
:
:We can say that it does wonders compared to our past SA/Clamav system.
:But Bayesian filtering takes time and I would say that over 3 weeks
:yours will improve greatly.

We've had ours for just over two weeks, and I couldn't be happier.  As
with any aggressive anti-spam solution, fine-tuning to mitigate false
positives requires attention, but I'm thouroughly happy with the
tradeoff.  Savings of personnel time alone will pay for the box in no more
than a few months.  Retention of customers who've grown tired of UCE and
virii adds even more value.

Feature-wise, I'd suggest that any *SP considering it get the 400 or
better.

I've been preparing a "wish list".  Wish list items include:

 - Option to set up read-only accounts, to allow front line techs to
review message logs when investigating customer complaints

 - Admin-customizable scoring for criteria used in Barracuda's spam
algorithms (i.e., at the admin's discretion, drop the lack of a Real Name
ahead of the sender's email address to 0, and so on)

 - Fine-tuning of their regex schema (they're probably already aware of
the problems here)

 - TFTP upload of:
	- equivalent of sendmail.cw
	- black/white-listed networks/domains/email addresses

 - TFTP download of backups (vs web-client-based downloads)

I love the box.  Bang for the buck is amazing.

No, I don't work for them, not married to any of the principals'
daughters, didn't help to finance them, just a very satisfied customer.

Cheers,
Brian