17 May 2006

Prairienet is pleased announce that we will be implementing the Proofpoint 
'appliance' for spam and virus control. The Proofpoint Messaging Security 
Gateway is the same successful spam control system that is in use for for 
tens of thousands of users at the University of Illinois.  We hope that it 
will perform as well for Prairienet.

Systems staff will be working with the vendor beginning at 2pm Thursday, 
May 18th (tomorrow).  With any luck they should be ready to 'flip the 
switch' by late afternoon.  (Sorry for the short notice, but we had to 
work around the hardware installation and the vendor's schedule.)

During the shakedown phase, there may be service interruptions and 
delivery lags as they tweak the system to find the most efficient 
configuration.

In a variety of independent tests, Proofpoint has demonstrated a 95% catch 
rate and a near zero false positive rate.  (A false positive occurs when a 
message that is NOT spam is blocked or tagged as spam.) The anti-virus 
function is provided by either McAffee or F-Secure, both leaders in the 
enterprise-level anti-virus software.

As initially configured, the system will block viruses and certain spam, 
and 'tag and deliver' messages rated as probable spam.  Although most 
people should see a close to total elimination of viruses and a 
significant reduction in spam, this system cannot eliminate spam entirely 
-- no system can -- but based on our experiences with the U of I system, 
it should do a very good job.