News from PANUG - February 15, 2001

ADDITIONAL DETAIL

Someone asked for more detail on tonight's presentation
about dealing with viruses. Gregg Berkholtz will tell us
about how his company uses a Linux system to intercept
incoming email messages and virus scan them before passing
them on to the company email system. His company uses
GroupWise but Gregg's presentation applies to you even if
you use another product, such as Exchange.

Front-ending an email system with a Linux box is a concept
that was presented a few months ago by Gregg and Ed
Sawicki who talked about implementing a Realtime Blackhole
List (RBL) to mail products that don't support RBLs.
Tonight's presentation adds the virus scanning piece. Note
that Gregg's presentation shows how to put the virus
scanning on a Linux platform but most of the viruses that
are being scanned for are viruses that affect Windows
users.

If you're asking yourself why you should do this with Linux
instead of products that run on the same platform as your
mail program, there are many answers. Lower cost is an
obvious answer because the solution that Gregg will
present combines open source (free) software and commercial
products. However, cost is not the only reason and
certainly not the most important. Heterogeneous solutions
are appealing because an attack against one platform will
not likely affect the other.

Yet, a third reason is that Linux has so many other functions
that can be implemented on the same machine as the virus
scanner but have very little impact on performance. These
include logging, packet filtering, NAT, RBLs, etc.. It's a
good way to unburden your more expensive platforms.

Get to the meeting a little before 6:15 and enjoy the
pizza and refreshments provided by Hall-Kinion. Remember that
at about 7:00 pm, Master CNE Bruce Yatvin will present "NDS
Health, Maintenance, and Repair Techniques". Gregg's
presentation will follow.


WORDS NOT IN THE DICTIONARY

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and
 the person who doesn't get it.

Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are
  running late.