Give your Google Message Security filters a tune-up
March 31st, 2010 | Published in Google Enterprise
Google Postini security services work in the cloud to help prevent spam and viruses before they hit your servers. These services also make it easy for admins to fine-tune filtering options to get the right level of protection for their organization's unique needs.
It can often be a delicate balance between protecting networks from attacks and allowing employees the flexibility to use email effectively. To help achieve this balance, today we're introducing a new Google Message Security reporting feature: Health Check.
Health Check helps you maximize the effectiveness of your spam filters. Think of it as a self-service "tune-up" for your Postini filters. It gives admins a comprehensive report that will help them check how current configurations impact the effectiveness of antispam and antivirus filters.
This report also highlights deviations from our recommended best practices, so that you can see areas where more protection might be helpful and select the levels that best meet your needs. For example, reports can "flag" areas of risk in user-defined settings, help optimize Approved Sender Lists, and guide the way you set up firewalls.
In this snippet from a Health Check report, the Virus Outbreak Level for this account is set to "Normal" (see red outline over item "2"). Our guidelines suggest that admins set this to Very High to increase security against viruses and malware. Deviations from recommended best practices are highlighted in red text so you can easily identify where changes can be made to tighten security.
You can see a larger view here.
With Health Check, we hope to empower administrators to make the best use of Postini Services. Health Check is now available through the Postini service administration console to Postini and Google Apps Premier Edition customers.
For more information the Google Postini suite of security and archving services, visit www.google.com/postini
Posted by Gopal Shah, Google Postini team