"As we are a non-profit organisation, the fact that we are keeping away dozens of unwanted mails, viruses and exploits every day with GFI technology means that we are dramatically decreasing the TCO of our IT infrastructure." - Pascal Tesch, CIO at radio 100,7, Luxembourg

Radio 100,7 relies on GFI MailEssentials for Exchange/SMTP and GFI MailSecurity for Exchange/SMTP to block email spam, viruses, exploits and threats at server level, before these can be distributed to its users. Both these products also help the organization to drastically reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of its IT infrastructure.

Radio 100,7 (www.100komma7.lu) is a public, state-sponsored radio that has been on air in Luxembourg since 1993. Its main focus is to broadcast a 100% advertisement-free, non-commercial schedule, with a primary accent on social and cultural issues. Its musical agenda is dominated by classical and non-mainstream music, characterised by themed shows and the coverage of external events, such as the annual Luxembourg ‘Blues ‘N’ Jazz Rally’ and contributions to the EBU-Network through recordings of concerts from the philharmonic orchestra held in Luxembourg.

“As a public radio, we receive all sorts of information, sent to us by various individuals and organizations,” Pascal Tesch, CIO at radio 100,7 explained. “Whereas three years ago, we received dozens of faxes a day, we now receive and distribute hundreds of emails daily. Email has become our primary communication tool for both internal and external communication.”

Yet, though email has simplified corporate life at the radio station, it also presents a number of problems that were crucial for Mr. Tesch to solve.

A single email virus would be a disaster
“As we are now running a 100% digital radio, based on computerized editing and storage of audio-files, we cannot afford a single virus,” Mr. Tesch stressed. “One email virus would spell disaster for us - it would block our flow of work and all our communications, and would result in huge recovery costs too.”

Another issue the radio now has to face is spam: “Most of the emails we receive contain valuable information, but recently ever more spam was filling our mailboxes. In the rush to get rid of these unwanted emails, there is a real risk of deleting the wrong mail among dozens of best price, porn and other such messages. We needed to tackle the problem of unwanted mail without affecting the email messages we did want to receive.”

Radio 100,7 planned to solve both issues by sourcing the right software products that would support their mail server, Microsoft Exchange Server.

Keeping spam away
“Among all the server level anti-spam candidates, GFI MailEssentials for Exchange/SMTP seemed to be the most appropriate product, mainly because it offers a blend of features that work together to block spam while allowing legitimate mails to come through as usual,” Mr. Tesch remarked.

GFI MailEssentials features Bayesian filtering technology to detect spam based on message content. Rather than just checking for keywords, GFI's Bayesian filter takes the whole message into consideration as well as the content of valid emails sent by the organization (known as 'ham'). This gives it a tremendous advantage over other anti-spam solutions that only take spam into account. Bayesian filters are widely acclaimed to be the best way to tackle spam because they use statistical intelligence to analyze the content of the mail.

Besides, the product intelligently analyzes the email header and identifies spam based on message field information, while also allowing administrators to configure lists of keywords and phrases enabling it to identify spam. GFI MailEssentials additionally offers support for multiple DNS and local blacklists; the ability to block spam by character set; and fake non-delivery reports generation. It also includes a patented automatic whitelist management tool that automatically adds all business partners to the whitelist so that their mail will not be passed through the spam filter; this greatly reduces false positives.

“GFI MailEssentials was an all-round winner. The new Bayesian feature included in GFI MailEssentials is a revolutionary approach that shows how the company is at the forefront in finding new ways to keep its customers spam-free,” Mr. Tesch added.

An easy choice
To tackle email threats such as virus, exploits and Trojans, Mr. Tesch felt that GFI MailSecurity, available in a suite with GFI MailEssentials, was the obvious choice.

GFI MailSecurity for Exchange/SMTP is an email content checking, exploit detection, threats analysis and anti-virus solution that removes all types of email-borne threats before they can affect an organization’s email users. GFI MailSecurity's key features include multiple virus engines, for virus engine independence and better security; email content and attachment checking, to quarantine dangerous content; an exploit shield, to detect emails with OS and application exploits; an HTML threats engine, to disable HTML scripts; a Trojan & Executable Scanner, to detect potentially malicious executables; and more.

“The GFI MailSecurity/GFI MailEssentials seemed to us to be the ideal solution. We are particularly impressed with GFI MailSecurity’s inclusion of multiple virus engines, and its content filtering abilities. Another good feature offered by the GFI MailEssentials & GFI MailSecurity Suite is its seamless integration with the Microsoft environment.” Mr. Tesch said.

“We were already familiar with GFI because we had used GFI DownloadSecurity* with our ISA Server with satisfaction. So our choice was very easy. We are now running GFI MailEssentials and GFI MailSecurity to protect our Exchange Server. We’ve installed them both at the gateway.”

Mr. Tesch is satisfied with these products in terms of the bottom line, too: “As we are a non-profit organisation, the fact that we are keeping away dozens of unwanted mails, viruses and exploits every day with GFI technology means that we are dramatically decreasing the TCO of our IT infrastructure.”

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

February 2004

* Note: GFI DownloadSecurity has since been replaced by GFI WebMonitor for ISA Server.