If your desktops and file servers are protected with quality anti-virus software, why bother applying an additional tier of protection at your Notes or Exchange servers, and at your Internet SMTP mail server? Isn’t traditional anti-virus protection enough?

In the vast majority of cases, the answer to this question is a resounding “NO”. Notes and Exchange are powerful groupware environments that enable viruses to spread more quickly and easily than ever before.  

At the same time, email to and from the Internet continues to increase corporate exposure to infection from outside sources.

Supplementing desktop and file server virus protection with native anti-virus software at the groupware and SMTP mail server clearly provides added insurance when virus outbreaks occur. It also pays dividends in several other important areas: 

1.    Fewer Calls to the Help Desk
Suppose someone in Human Resources, for example, unknowingly distributes an infected Word document to 1,000 employees. Even if each of these employees is using Virus tool on the desktop, has it updated, and cleans the file successfully, the incident is likely to generate a substantial volume of calls to the help desk with related questions and concerns. Catching infected files at the Internet mail server or internal groupware server can increase productivity of the IT staff significantly. 

2.    Increased Employee Productivity
By stopping viruses at the email or groupware server whenever possible, employees can continue to do their job without unnecessary interruptions. In the above scenario, all 1,000 employees who received the infected file will lose productivity as they individually fight off the infection. If the infected message is forwarded before the virus is detected, additional users will be infected, perhaps even those outside the company.  

3.    Better Audit Trail and Alerting Capabilities
It is considerably easier for network administrators to accurately record and analyze virus incidents when they occur on a centrally monitored server than when they are widely distributed among a variety of end user desktops.

Solutions to detect and clean infected attachments one time… on the mail server itself. After a successful clean, the original message is automatically forwarded through to all intended recipients with a clean bill of health. Unless you choose to alert the message recipients, they will never even know that it contained a virus in the first place. Only the sender and mail administrator are notified. A problem that could have resulted in substantial help desk activity and productivity loss, has been stopped before it had a chance to get started.