Symantec Updates Anti-virus, Anti-Spam Support for Exchange 2003

Symantec on Monday rolled out Mail Security 4.5 for Microsoft Exchange, which has been updated to support Exchange 2003, and adds new anti-spam capabilities to the Redmond, Wash.-based developer's newest mail server software.

Mail Security 4.5 for Microsoft Exchange, which is available now, supports Exchange 2003's Virus Scan application programming interface (API) 2.5 for scanning of all message bodies and attachments, as well as support for Microsoft's new Spam Confidence Layer (SCL) technique of categorizing spam messages.

Other new features in the update include a heuristic anti-spam engine that analyzes incoming messages by looking at key characteristics -- rather than only sniffing out suspect subject headings, for instance -- and then assigns a confidence rating to determine if, in fact, the message is likely junk mail, not legit.

Administrators can now also apply score-based spam handling to decide how stringent the organization filters messages for spam; they can also create and use whitelists -- lists of trusted senders whose message bypass the spam filter entirely -- to guarantee that those senders' mail isn't accidentally dropped as spam, or held up by the filter's processing.