GeCAD RAV AntiVirus - E-mail Virus Protection
Overview
GeCAD RAV AntiVirus is the simple answer for mail server virus control, eliminating many of the problems with standard anti-virus solutions. It is maintenance free, reliable, and doesn't require an extra computer (It works within our cluster-based mail system.) It works with a virus scanner that is highly reliable and virus databases that are frequently updated.
There are a number of email anti-virus solutions available today. However, most of them involve an unnecessary SMTP server chain. This means that email comes in to one SMTP server, is scanned for viruses, and then goes to another SMTP server which processes the mail in the usual fashion.
As a result, companies that specialize in anti-virus research end up trying to write a special product for an email server. Some companies do a decent job at it and charge a fortune. Others do a lousy job and only charge a small fortune. In the process, mail clients lose some features of their email server, such as most anti-spam checks and user authentication. That is, if authentication with the normal mail server is required, the email intended for a local user doesn't even get scanned.. Because twice the number of mail hops are required, twice the resources are required and there is twice the potential for error or for security holes.
GeCAD RAV AntiVirus takes care of these problems by interacting with the CommuniGate Pro server directly and passing the mail attachments on to a command-line virus scanner. Because GeCAD RAV AntiVirus communicates directly with the CommuniGate Pro SMTP server, it bypasses that extra hop that causes so many problems with other email virus scanning approaches.
Operation
GeCAD RAV AntiVirus uses a CommuniGate Pro hook to intercept all email between the point at which it is received, and the point at which CommuniGate Pro delivers it. This way, GeCAD RAV catches all email that goes through the CommuniGate Pro server -- incoming and outgoing. GeCAD RAV AntiVirus will decode any attachment and save it to a file (with a file name generated by GeCAD RAV, for security reasons). Then, it will create a process to run the anti-virus software. Once the anti-virus software has scanned the file, GeCAD RAV AntiVirus will take the appropriate action. By default, GeCAD RAV AntiVirus will log every email that it scans. It will report if any viruses are caught. Any viruses are placed into a quarantine directory on the CommuniGate Pro server. GeCAD RAV AntiVirus Pro allows choosing which mail domains and users have their mail scanned. Per-user settings override per-domain settings, and per-domain settings override the default settings.
There are two main types of virus scanners: on-access scanners, and on-demand scanners. Command-line scanners (the type GeCAD RAV uses) are on-demand scanners.
An on-demand scanner is run when the user requests it. It can either be a command-line scanner, or a standard Linux program. The command line scanner works well with GeCAD RAV because it can be set to scan specific files, and be configured in GeCAD RAV by adding command line parameters to the file name.
An on-access scanner scans all files that are written to the hard drive. These usually just cause unnecessary overhead when run with GeCAD RAV, as the files will end up getting scanned twice.
GeCAD RAV AntiVirus allows you to send notifications to the recipient of a virus, the sender, and/or third parties. Our settings are not to send notifications to the intended recipient of the virus, the sender of the virus, and the local host (local webmaster).
