Lotus Protector Converted Me!
December 11 2009
I had to get this out before Lotusphere so you could take a look at it yourself b/c ok - I admit it..I'm a convert. I have to tell you..the things that are coming out of Lotus Development these days never cease to amaze me, and Lotus has gone and done it again!
I had the good fortune to be able to shadow a Lotus Protector Proof of Concept installation. Lotus Protector for Mail Security is a content filtering solution that blocks spam and viruses out of the box and also provides rich content filtering of inbound/outbound messages (the filtering part is pretty cool...more on that later!). Now, normally an anti-spam/anti-virus solution wouldn't exactly get me stoked! This, on the other hand..was pretty darn cool!
So the customer I visited was looking to replace their existing anti-virus solution (from one vendor) as well as their anti-spam solution (from another vendor) and possibly take out another solution that was doing some address verification and re-writes. All-in-all, they had 5 boxes in conjunction with their Domino mail solution that provided those features. We hoped to replace those 5 boxes with one - yes, one - a Lotus Protector instance. (big hopes, in my mind at the time!) I was prepared for a very long day of installing and configuring software.
When we got there, the customer had a VMWare instance waiting for us, and Lotus Protector was installed in that instance in little to no time with no intervention (it was a self-expanding ISO image) and we were ready to begin configuring rules. First, we connected Lotus Protector to the Domino LDAP (or any LDAP) so that it could do address lookups, use groups for administration or filtering rules and fun things like that. Once it was connected to LDAP, we validated the pre-configured rules for anti-spam and anti-virus - changing only a few variables for how the messages got routed or quarantined. Then - and this is the really cool part - we setup a sample compliance rule to check for any emails that might be storing credit card or Social Security Number information.
Then, we setup where to route informational notes which could be either to a group or individual email account -- OR (this is the cool part) through an RSS feed. We chose to do RSS feeds and setup a feed in the admin's Notes 8.5.1 client. And, because the admin was using Notes 8.5.1, they also had complete integration into Protector to manage spam mail settings and more on Protector directly from in the Notes client.
We setup a few more rules, validated the configuration and voila...we were done! Then we re-routed mail flows so it only went through Protector, not the other appliances, and watched it work! The interesting part...within a 2-hour timeframe of Protector being in place, the admins were able to identify more than 5 messages either coming into their environment or out of the environment that has credit card information in it - all b/c of a rule that took less than a minute to setup! I thought that was pretty cool!!
I don't want to get into all the cool things of Protector right now because I'd hate to spoil your fun of learning about it next week at Lotusphere! But all I can say is that it made a convert of me and I know think it's an AWESOME tool!! If you're going to Lotusphere next week - take a look at it. They will be at Pedestal #7 in the showcase and are also presenting on Thursday from 10-11am (ID207).
See you there!
I had the good fortune to be able to shadow a Lotus Protector Proof of Concept installation. Lotus Protector for Mail Security is a content filtering solution that blocks spam and viruses out of the box and also provides rich content filtering of inbound/outbound messages (the filtering part is pretty cool...more on that later!). Now, normally an anti-spam/anti-virus solution wouldn't exactly get me stoked! This, on the other hand..was pretty darn cool!
So the customer I visited was looking to replace their existing anti-virus solution (from one vendor) as well as their anti-spam solution (from another vendor) and possibly take out another solution that was doing some address verification and re-writes. All-in-all, they had 5 boxes in conjunction with their Domino mail solution that provided those features. We hoped to replace those 5 boxes with one - yes, one - a Lotus Protector instance. (big hopes, in my mind at the time!) I was prepared for a very long day of installing and configuring software.
When we got there, the customer had a VMWare instance waiting for us, and Lotus Protector was installed in that instance in little to no time with no intervention (it was a self-expanding ISO image) and we were ready to begin configuring rules. First, we connected Lotus Protector to the Domino LDAP (or any LDAP) so that it could do address lookups, use groups for administration or filtering rules and fun things like that. Once it was connected to LDAP, we validated the pre-configured rules for anti-spam and anti-virus - changing only a few variables for how the messages got routed or quarantined. Then - and this is the really cool part - we setup a sample compliance rule to check for any emails that might be storing credit card or Social Security Number information.
Then, we setup where to route informational notes which could be either to a group or individual email account -- OR (this is the cool part) through an RSS feed. We chose to do RSS feeds and setup a feed in the admin's Notes 8.5.1 client. And, because the admin was using Notes 8.5.1, they also had complete integration into Protector to manage spam mail settings and more on Protector directly from in the Notes client.
We setup a few more rules, validated the configuration and voila...we were done! Then we re-routed mail flows so it only went through Protector, not the other appliances, and watched it work! The interesting part...within a 2-hour timeframe of Protector being in place, the admins were able to identify more than 5 messages either coming into their environment or out of the environment that has credit card information in it - all b/c of a rule that took less than a minute to setup! I thought that was pretty cool!!
I don't want to get into all the cool things of Protector right now because I'd hate to spoil your fun of learning about it next week at Lotusphere! But all I can say is that it made a convert of me and I know think it's an AWESOME tool!! If you're going to Lotusphere next week - take a look at it. They will be at Pedestal #7 in the showcase and are also presenting on Thursday from 10-11am (ID207).
See you there!
