How effective is Antivirus Email protection?

[Migration User]

How effective are the antivirus email tools, in SEP? It comes with three components, Internet Email Auto-protect, Microsoft  outlook auto-protect, and  Lotus  Notes Auto-protect.

Could these be  completely  relied on? What are its limitation? Why would any one  need Messaging security/Mail security software, if he has these auto-protect options  from SEP?

Any light on this, or infiormation is greaty appreciated...

[Migration User]

I understand that, mail security soft-wares are dedicated security  fr mails, and may have anti-spam capabilities  too....just wanted to know how effective is SEP in scanning, malicious email...

[Migration User]

If you have a SMS for exchange then it will protect your mailbox on the server..Having Outlook autoprotect pluggin on your machine is just a redundancy as it uses same definitions. So if something is not detected on exchange server it will also not get detected on your local system.

[Migration User]

could  i have  just  sep antivirus email tools, and not  mail security  ? How effective  is it, for scanning  emails? I guess, mail security  may  have additional engines to scan emails, that  AP does not  ....

[Migration User]

Antivirus tools are just addtional pluggins and SMS is a full product..Emails tools are not as reliable as SMS.
For installing SMS it is recommended to remove Email toolsas it will just slow down your mailbox.

If you are using the email tools feature of Symantec AntiVirus™ Corporate

Edition, you must uninstall the feature before you install Mail Security. The

email tools feature of Symantec AntiVirus™is not compatible with Mail Security

or Microsoft Exchange.

[Migration User]

Internet Email Auto-Protect protects both incoming email messages and outgoing email messages that use the POP3 or SMTP communications protocol over the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). When Internet Email Auto-Protect is enabled, the
client software scans both the body text of the email and any attachments that
are included.
 

You can enable Auto-Protect to support the handling of encrypted email over POP3 and SMTP connections. Auto-Protect detects the secure connections and does not scan the encrypted messages. Even if Internet Email Auto-Protect does not scan encrypted messages, it continues to protect computers from viruses and security risks in attachments.
 

File System Auto-Protect scans email attachments when you save the attachments to the hard drive.

The Symantec Endpoint Protection client also provides outbound email heuristics scanning. The heuristics scanning uses Bloodhound Virus Detection to identify the risks that may be contained in outgoing messages. When the client scans outgoing email messages, the scan helps to prevent the spread of risks. These risks include the worms that can use email clients to replicate and distribute themselves across a network.

Email scanning does not support the following email clients:
■ IMAP clients
■ AOL clients
■ HTTP-based email such as Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail



Could these be  completely  relied on?
----Yes, if you can rely on Auto Protect you cab rely ton Internet Email Auto protect also.

What are its limitation?
--- It may block emails at times or  takes long time to open  documents that are big in size

Why would any one  need Messaging security/Mail security software, if he has these auto-protect options  from SEP?
----Symantec Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange provides real-time protection for email against viruses, spam, spyware, phishing, and other attacks while enforcing content policies on Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, 2007 and 2010. Powered by Brightmail technology, Symantec stops 99 percent of spam while making fewer than 1 mistake per million messages. It supports 64 bit Windows and Virtualized Exchange server environment with easy installation and simple administration.

Also SEP auto protect will not protect you from spam and phishing.  Mail security also act a Content filter

[Migration User]

Thanks  a lot, maite Prachand and  Vikram....I got it now  ....:-)