Microsoft Antigen E-mail Server Security Products: Features
Microsoft Antigen e-mail server security products help businesses protect their messaging environment against viruses, worms, spam, and inappropriate content.
| • | Additional Standard Scan Engine: The Microsoft Antivirus engine, developed by the Microsoft anti-malware team, is now a standard Antigen engine, providing all Antigen customers with an additional layer of protection. |
| • | Enhanced Cluster Support: Antigen configuration data and scan engine signature files are now associated with a Microsoft Exchange Virtual Server (EVS), so nodes do not need to be configured separately and both active and passive nodes will have the most up-to-date configuration information and signatures. |
| • | Secure Signature Updates: All signature updates for all nine scan engines are digitally signed by Microsoft to ensure secure, uncorrupt delivery to customers. |
| • | Multiple Update Paths: Antigen can now be configured with redundant update paths to ensure successful scan engine and signature file updates if primary network connections are not functioning properly. |
| • | Administrator Notification Enhancements: Antigen now provides administrators with greater flexibility through new customized notifications for Spam/RBL (real-time blackhole lists), content, sender/subject line filters, and quarantine database alerts. |
| • | Microsoft Security Design Lifecycle: Antigen e-mail security products have all completed Microsoft’s Security Design Lifecycle review, ensuring that Antigen meets Microsoft’s high standards for secure code development. |
Antigen 9.0 with SP1
Microsoft Antigen 9.0 with SP1 is now available, and provides the additional benefits of:
| • | Enhanced Cluster Support: Provides support for mount point drives, support for drives on multiple volumes of a disk, as well as a command line option for drives with no mount volume information. |
| • | Office 2007 Support: Supports scanning of Office 2007 Open XML format documents. |
| • | Globalization: Enables installation of English-only Antigen products on all non-English platforms. |
| • | Engine Consolidation: Enables customers to select the new consolidated CA engine, which combines the CA Inoculate and CA Vet engines, as one of the five total scan engines per scanning operation. |
| • | Roll-up of Software Fixes: Provides all of the latest fixes in one easy-to-install package. |
Click here to download the trial version of Antigen with SP1.
Antigen for Exchange
| Feature | Description |
Multiple Engine Manager | Antigen for Exchange allows you to manage up to nine different antivirus scan engines to provide unmatched protection against viruses and worms. |
Distributed scanning | Antigen for Exchange distributes antivirus scanning between the SMTP transport core and the Exchange Information Store to reduce workload on any one server and provides layers of protection. |
Bias settings | Antigen for Exchange gives administrators the ability to set (in the Multiple Engine Manager) the percentage of engines used for an individual scan job. This allows you to maximize protection without impacting server performance. |
Content filtering | Antigen for Exchange allows customers to scan message body text and subject lines, blocking messages that contain key words for inappropriate content. Keyword lists can be populated by administrators or imported from existing lists. |
File filtering | Antigen for Exchange allows administrators to block files based on attachment file extension, type, name, and size, including individual files within zip or container files. In many cases this capability can be used to block new malicious attacks for which there is not yet an available signature, as well as block file transfers (like .mp3) that open up organizations to legal exposure. |
Worm removal | Antigen for Exchange matches worm messages against a list of known worms and immediately deletes them, preventing them from ever being forwarded to the Exchange Information Store where they could take up disk space and confuse users. |
Integration with native Microsoft SMTP stack | Many antivirus products use a port 25 redirector to scan SMTP traffic. Because Antigen for Exchange uses the native Microsoft SMTP stack for routing, it doesn’t need to perform redundant routing and administrators aren’t required to configure port 25. Antigen is plug and play. |
In-memory scanning | Instead of spooling all data to disk to scan, Antigen for Exchange allocates available application memory. This speeds up scanning and lowers the impact on server performance. |
Multi-threaded scanning | In high-mail volume environments, including during virus outbreaks, Antigen for Exchange can also establish multiple simultaneously scanning threads to process more traffic at once, improving throughput. |
Accurate, rapid updates | Microsoft tests each signature update supplied by every one of our scan engine partners to ensure it is valid before uploading them to customer environments. Antigen for Exchange regularly polls for these updates and automatically receives the latest threat protection as soon as it is available. |
Disclaimers | Antigen for Exchange gives administrators the ability to add disclaimer text to all outbound messages. This action can be customized by sender, recipient, or domain name. |
Integration with Microsoft Operations Manager | Antigen for Exchange provides integration with Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) to ensure uptime and enable MOM administrators to monitor, update, and initiate scans on Antigen-protected servers. |
Antigen for SMTP Gateways
| Feature | Description |
Multiple Engine Manager | Antigen for SMTP Gateways allows you to manage up to nine different antivirus scan engines to provide unmatched protection against viruses and worms. |
Bias settings | Antigen for SMTP Gateways gives administrators the ability to set (in the Multiple Engine Manager) the percentage of engines used for an individual scan job. This allows you to maximize protection without impacting server performance. |
Content filtering | Antigen for SMTP Gateways allows customers to scan message body text and subject lines, blocking messages that contain key words for inappropriate content. Keyword lists can be populated by administrators or imported from existing lists. |
File filtering | Antigen for SMTP Gateways allows administrators to block files based on attachment file extension, type, name, and size, including individual files within zip or container files. In many cases this capability can be used to block new malicious attacks for which there is not yet an available signature, as well as block file transfers (like .mp3) that open up organizations to legal exposure. |
Worm removal | Antigen for SMTP Gateways matches worm messages against a list of known worms and immediately deletes them, preventing them from ever being forwarded to the Exchange Information Store where they could take up disk space and confuse users. |
Integration with native Microsoft SMTP stack | Many antivirus products use a port 25 redirector to scan SMTP traffic. Because Antigen for SMTP Gateways uses the native Microsoft SMTP stack for routing, it doesn’t need to perform redundant routing and administrators aren’t required to configure port 25. Antigen is plug and play. |
In-memory scanning | Instead of spooling all data to disk to scan, Antigen for SMTP Gateways allocates available application memory. This speeds up scanning and lowers the impact on server performance. |
Multi-threaded scanning | In high-mail volume environments, including during virus outbreaks, Antigen for SMTP Gateways can also establish multiple simultaneously scanning threads to process more traffic at once, improving throughput. |
Accurate, rapid updates | Microsoft tests each signature update supplied by every one of our scan engine partners to ensure it is valid before uploading them to customer environments. Antigen for SMTP Gateways regularly polls for these updates and automatically receives the latest threat protection as soon as it is available. |
Disclaimers | Antigen for SMTP Gateways gives administrators the ability to add disclaimer text to all outbound messages. This action can be customized by sender, recipient, or domain name. |
Integration with Microsoft Operations Manager | Antigen for SMTP Gateways provides integration with Microsoft Operations Manager to ensure uptime and enable MOM administrators to monitor, update, and initiate scans on Antigen-protected servers. |
Antigen Spam Manager
| Feature | Description |
Accurate Spam Detection | Antigen Spam Manager uses a frequently updated, signature-based anti-spam engine that identifies and removes spammer tricks that prevent spam from being blocked. The engine is continually updated by a team of experts who create precise signatures that identify multiple spam messages originating from the same spammer. These signatures are highly accurate, causing very few false positives. |
Intelligent Message Filter integration | Antigen Spam Manager integrates with Exchange’s heuristics-based Intelligent Message Filter to give customers the ability to combine multiple anti-spam methodologies for improved overall detection. |
Real-time block list support | Antigen Spam Manager provides support for multiple external real-time block lists. |
Junk mail folders | For organizations that want users to be able to see and manage their own spam, Advanced Spam Manager provides several junk mail folder options. Advanced Spam Manager provides integration with Microsoft Outlook 2003 junk mail folders when deployed on Exchange Server 2003. Advanced Spam Manager provides its own junk mail folder for Exchange 2000 environments. |
For More Information
The following links provide a more in-depth look at Antigen.