You've likely heard about honey pots, fake sites that can lure the bad guys to the wrong place. There are other ways to test your site to make sure the door is bolted to keep intruders out. You can put messages in the mail stream in real time, to see how your security responds to spam and viruses, for example, before committing to any one messaging-security gateway.
The bottom line for all CIOs investing in anti-spam software is to see how the mail comes in from the spammers and to extract specific information about how they get in and how to respond to the attack. If you are using security settings, such as encryption requirements, you will need to put that device in its final position to test its accuracy. One suggestion: keep your old messaging-security gateway inside of the new test system. And be sure to keep the old system until you are certain that the new one works.
For more on protecting your network:
- see NetworkWorld article [1]
Links:
[1] http://www.networkworld.com/research/2007/101207-unified-messaging-security-tips.html?ts0hb=&story=ac1_guidetomessec