Email Monitoring Software ?

[UKMatt]

Anyone know of, or use anything at work that monitors employee's email usage.

We have had a spate of the Sirc32 virus at work, want to block certain types of attachments.

Sorta like a quarantine zone.

Then i get to see who's misusing the email system aswell.

Running MS Exchange 5.5.

[Chipzilla]

Baltimore MailSweeper - <a href="http://www.baltimore.com/mailsweeper/exchange.html" target="_blank">http://www.baltimore.com/mailsweeper/exchange.html</a>. You can use whatever AV software you want with it. McAfee GroupShield Exchange is much the same...

[j-man]

I'm currently looking for the same kind of thing and these are the ones I've been checking out:

<a href="http://www.gfi.com/me/index.html" target="_blank">Mail Essentials</a>
<a href="http://www.nwtechusa.com/mailmarshal.php" target="_blank">MailMarshal</a>

[Sunshine]

If you're using McAfee Groupshield, then you can specify which file extensions to block. With the recent virus outbreak of Magistr & Gone, we've blocked all offending extensions with great sucess. If you don't want to block, just clean, then you can tell it where to put the uncleanable files and to send you an alert when a virus is found. A very handy thing when you're trying to track down who started the whole mess at a larger company.
As far as tracking e-mail, Exchange 5.5 has built in logging of e-mail information. It's really hard to make head or tails out of in the beginning, but it'll give you the needed "from" & "to" showing the transport route taken. The only thing you can't do with Exchange tracking is read the contents of the message.

[Sunshine]

One other thing I forgot to mention:
Be very careful of the toes you step on when monitoring e-mail messages. I've heard tell of some serious bullpoopoo happening (legal I ramifications I mean) if you start actually reading people's e-mail. It could be construed as a breach of thier right to privacy if you don't have <U>clearly</U> defined guildlines on usage of company resources, and things that the administrator can & can't do without the user's permission.

just my .02

[EvilCabbage]

I'd give Sophos a go. <a href="http://www.sophos.com" target="_blank">www.sophos.com</a>

We use Sophos MailMonitor for Domino, and it works wonderfully. They have not finished the MailMonitor for Exchange yet, but I believe you can download a beta version to see what you think

[EvilCabbage]

I think the issue here, is that the users somehow believe they have rights. This is wrong.

The workplace is not a democracy, and if users feel violated that we are protecting OUR systems, they can politely bugger off.

[quote]Originally posted by SuNsHiNe:
<strong>One other thing I forgot to mention:
Be very careful of the toes you step on when monitoring e-mail messages. I've heard tell of some serious bullpoopoo happening (legal I ramifications I mean) if you start actually reading people's e-mail. It could be construed as a breach of thier right to privacy if you don't have <U>clearly</U> defined guildlines on usage of company resources, and things that the administrator can & can't do without the user's permission.

just my .02</strong><hr></blockquote>

[iamtheman]

EvilCabbage,
I couldn't agree more!! User's have no rights.

We use Groupshield for Exchange and I can definitely say it works quite well. It was catching the goner bug before it even made the news.

[UKMatt]

Turns out we have a copy of Groupshield Exchange, result.

On the other matter, about the users "rights"

What has started this is i just installed the trial of webspy analyser.

Ran a report on the log files for the previous 7 days, and found a lot of misuse.

One person had spent 15 hours on the internet, he woks 39 hours a week, so he has spent over 30% of his time surfin the net, which wasn't business related.

I have now got to expand it to email. I have been instructed that all .exe, .mpg and similar attachments are to be blocked. Was trying to upload an urgent graphics file to our customers ftp site, suddenly we have no bandwidth, no-one surfing the net, checked the mail queue, 33mb of emails waiting to go out. No wonder it killed it, we only have isdn at the minute.

[Chipzilla]

evilcabbage, what the f*ck are you talking about you moron? Where are writing from? Afghanistan? Workers do have rights, you'll be sorry to hear. SuNsHiNe hit the nail on the head. As you're in the UK Matt, you and your bosses would want to watch your arses. Workers have rights under the Human Rights Act and Data Protection Act. Balancing this with the needs of your business is a minefield. If your workers don't have anything in their contracts forbidding them from sending personal emails, making personal phone calls, or surfing the net, you could be in deep sh*t if you monitor them. Check with your company solicitors before doing anything of the sort. Companies in the UK have been sued for this in the past. Any wannabe BOFHs out there would be advised not to do any monitoring under their own initiative unless they want a P45 themselves. Anyway, people have been wasting time at work since the beginning of time. Look at us just now. We should all be working instead of posting on forums...

[Wayward Clam]

[quote]Originally posted by Chipzilla:
<strong>evilcabbage, what the f*ck are you talking about you moron? ... ... Workers do have rights, you'll be sorry to hear. ... ... Workers have rights under the Human Rights Act and Data Protection Act... ...If your workers don't have anything in their contracts forbidding them from sending personal emails, making personal phone calls, or surfing the net, you could be in deep sh*t if you monitor them. Check with your company solicitors before doing anything of the sort. Companies in the UK have been sued for this in the past. ...</strong><hr></blockquote>

Chipzilla, don't act like the moron you accuse EvilCabbage of being. Yes, there are legal ramifications to this. Yes, you would be stupid to not check them out before going ahead with the monitoring. But, as an employee, once it says in company policy that the company monitors you, then good luck getting anything done about it. As long as our malicious vegetable friend does nothing untoward with his powers, and has something written that he can point at that says "my boss made me do it", he is scot-free.

[Chipzilla]

Sorry Wayward Clam, I notice you're on the other side of the Atlantic, where I hear laws are slightly different. If you read my post again, you'll see it is directed at UKMatt, not evilcabbage. What evilcabbage does is his problem - he seems to be past educating. It is not enough for any rules to be an ethereal "company policy". In most European countries, agreement to monitoring has to be specified in your contract, or at a later stage - a consent form signed by the employee.. So that's your argument out of the water... I stand by my calling evilcabbage a moron. It's obvious that he is. Unless he knows something about UK workplace law and human rights law that I don't - which I doubt as he is in Australia. Could any other privacy "experts" keep their views to themselves unless they actually know something about the laws of the country we're talking about? Thanks for your input Clam, but you don't have a clue what you're talking about...

[UKMatt]

Chipzilla,

Where is it in there contract that they are allowed email & internet ?

The easy way around it is to just revoke the privilege for the users that are abusing it.

Who says they have to know about the monitoring ?

[Chipzilla]

Matt, the law says they have to know. This might be hard for you to stomach, but it's the way it is. Could you be using this as an excuse to get dirt on someone? Because that's what it's starting to look like. I believe our American friends would call what you want to do a fishing expedition. If an employee is not aware that his conduct is not acceptable due to an omission by the employer there is f*ckall you can do. I've seen this argument work before, with the sacked employee receiving 80 grand for unfair dismissal at a certain electronics company starting with Mot..... . You or your boss would be advised to make sure you know what you're doing. I don't think a company with an ISDN line and a mail administrator who gets tips on how to secure his servers from a forum would last for too long more if a court made *you* pay out £80,000 to someone who was sacked as a result of your snooping. Get off your power trip and block the attachments at the server, and then you won't need to snoop. It's not up to you to decide what's business-related and what's not. If it's eating you up that much, highlight internet (ab)use to your boss and let him worry about the path to take...

[UKMatt]

All i was wanting to do was block the attachments.

Have i read anyones mailbox ?

No

Did i say i wanted to read anyones mailbox ?

No


No need for the attitude really is there ?

A$$hole