Outlook and irrational virus fears

[Richard]

Hello,

Can someone help me with some information?

I have been using Outlook 2000 successfully for two years now.

Recently, It has come to the attention of our IT staff that I have been using this product. The head of our IT staff has unhesitatingly and uncategorically forbid me from using this product as I will probably cause the demise of the building's network due to virus infestation.

His opinion is based on the fact that he has read somewhere that this product is incredibly virus prone.

Now, we receive email viruses here all of the time. We have a firewall, yet they still seem to get through. The subject lines say things like "details", "hi", and things of that nature - I know well enough to not open these.

What is troublesome is that there doesn't seem to be any product on the market which comes close to Outlooks abilities to send HTML messages?

I have read up on this subject and learned that we need to acquire something called a digital signature? If we acquire this - then recipients of an email will know WHO they are getting their email FROM!

What is confusing me is that the bulk of viruses seem to be on INCOMING emails! Is this true? If so, then a firewall seems to be a very practical thing to do yet it doesn't seem to prevent all viruses from getting past the network.

Is there someone who can comment on whether it is OK to use Outlook as a means to send email messages? What are the proper precautions to be taken?

I am sorry, but I like to be knowledgable and I like to sound like I know what I am talking about rather than split hairs over things that MIGHT happen.

Margaret.

 

[Gordon]

Hello,

Can someone help me with some information?
I have been using Outlook 2000 successfully for two years now.
Recently, It has come to the attention of our IT staff that I have been

using this product. The head of our IT staff has unhesitatingly and
uncategorically forbid me >from using this product as I will probably cause
the demise of the building's network due to virus infestation.

His opinion is based on the fact that he has read somewhere that this

product is incredibly virus prone.

Garbage. No more "virus prone" than any other Windows email client. As long
as you have an up-to-date Anti Virus program, save and scan attachments that
you need, and delete emails from people you don't know, then you are 99.9%
safe.

Now, we receive email viruses here all of the time. We have a firewall, yet

they still seem to get through.

A firewall does NOT stop email.

What is troublesome is that there doesn't seem to be any product on the

market which comes close to Outlooks abilities to send HTML messages?

I have read up on this subject and learned that we need to acquire

something called a digital signature? If we acquire this - then recipients
of an email will know >WHO they are getting their email FROM!

What is confusing me is that the bulk of viruses seem to be on INCOMING

emails! Is this true? If so, then a firewall seems to be a very practical
thing to do yet it >doesn't seem to prevent all viruses from getting past
the network.

See above - a Firewall does NOT stop email! Tell the IT dept to put some
effective virus-scanning software on your mail server. You might add that at
one company I worked for, we were infected by the "I Love You" virus
by....wait for it...ONE OF THE IT DEPT!
Don't take what the IT dept says as gospel, a large number of them don't
know what they are talking about. The IT dept is there to provide a service
to the Company, not the other way around.




Margaret.

 

[Rob Schneider]

Unsubstantiated bunk. Sounds like an un-informed and (dare I say
"lazy?) head of IT.

Re your company receiving email viruses all the time ... I find this
incredible, and will suggest this places your organisation under
unnecessary risk. Does the management of company know the risk that
they are enduring?

Your IT Department should immediately implement some sort of virus
scanning at the mail server or preferably before. Firewalls have
nothing to do with virus protection. Don't let anyone try to pull the
wool over your eyes on this one.

Re spam control (which is not necessarily viruses), the newest version
of Outlook (2003) has very effective spam control. We use SpamAssassin
to first catch (90%??) of spam and any with attached executables (which
are almost always viruses) ... the rest (9%?) are caught by Outlook's
spam detector. The rest of the spam, which are never laden with
viruses, are dealt with manually.

You are right, in my opinion, there is no tool like Outlook available if
you want the full PIM features.

Re digital signatures ... yet another issue. "Takes two to tango" on
this one. You and your receipients need to agree that you need such
thing for your correspondence. Do you have a real business need which
requires this? Think it through.

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms

 

[Michael]

-----Original Message-----

that I have been
using this product. The head of our IT staff has unhesitatingly and
uncategorically forbid me >from using this product as I will probably cause
the demise of the building's network due to virus infestation. somewhere that this
product is incredibly virus prone.

Garbage. No more "virus prone" than any other Windows email client. As long
as you have an up-to-date Anti Virus program, save and scan attachments that
you need, and delete emails from people you don't know, then you are 99.9%
safe.
have a firewall, yet
they still seem to get through.

A firewall does NOT stop email.
any product on the
market which comes close to Outlooks abilities to send HTML messages? to acquire
something called a digital signature? If we acquire this - then recipients
of an email will know >WHO they are getting their email FROM! to be on INCOMING
emails! Is this true? If so, then a firewall seems to be a very practical
thing to do yet it >doesn't seem to prevent all viruses from getting past
the network.

See above - a Firewall does NOT stop email! Tell the IT dept to put some
effective virus-scanning software on your mail server. You might add that at
one company I worked for, we were infected by the "I Love You" virus
by....wait for it...ONE OF THE IT DEPT!
Don't take what the IT dept says as gospel, a large number of them don't
know what they are talking about. The IT dept is there to provide a service
to the Company, not the other way around.




Margaret.


.
What you are talking about will be a email virus... and

as Margaret says "Get som virus checking software"... we
have @ my company some of this software and its called
GFI mailsecurity... what it does is it scans all emails
for virus before you actually get them in your inbox.
Then if a virus is attached the software will strip it
and the system admin will get notified of it!... Your
firewall is a system that protects you against incoming
hackers and worm viruses... not email viruses. A worm
virus will spread it's self by sending it's self to a IP
address in the net... this is done at random... if the
firewall is working properly the attack will bounce as
the firewall hides you from the attack!

Outlook 2003 is an excelent program and i would strongly
recommend you use it! The only problem your going to have
with it is that the s/w is so new the maunfactures
(MICROSOFT) won't have found all the bugs with it!

Regards



Michael

 

[Merlin]

Yikes!

Your IT staff are not very knowledable!

A firewall will never stop a virus (although some have this added features now), that's not it's job - A firewall is a network security device (computer hardware and firewall software) that is used to control access to other computers. A firewall allows access to authorized computers and denies access to unauthorized computers. An example of this is the front gate to a military base; a guard allows authorized persons to enter the base and turns away unauthorized persons. - although the route for some virus's/Trojans is through an unprotected/wrongly enabled port.

Whether you use Microsoft Outlook or any other modern email client is irrelevant as they will all now display active content, which without anti-virus software installed may automatically install a virus or provide links for you to inadvertently install a virus. Unfortunatley virus's are a way of life now, all it takes is you to send an email to someone that unknowingly has a virus installed and it then starts sending you emails with the virus to try and infect your PC and many a time it will disguise the from address(spoofing) so you think it came from someone else and visa/versa somebody thinks they received one from you - drives me MAD!

If as it appears you are within a company then you must install a centralised antivirus solution on your server that will scan all incoming email and automatically update itself with the latest anti-virus definitions and also install/update these automatically to all connected network client PC's - that together with a Firewall and formal guidlines for email use, i.e (don't try to open attachments from unknown parties) is all you can do.

Heck your IT staff can't take Outlook away, they might as well take the PC and give you a Typewriter

Merlin

Hello,

Can someone help me with some information?

I have been using Outlook 2000 successfully for two years now.

Recently, It has come to the attention of our IT staff that I have been using this product. The head of our IT staff has unhesitatingly and uncategorically forbid me from using this product as I will probably cause the demise of the building's network due to virus infestation.

His opinion is based on the fact that he has read somewhere that this product is incredibly virus prone.

Now, we receive email viruses here all of the time. We have a firewall, yet they still seem to get through. The subject lines say things like "details", "hi", and things of that nature - I know well enough to not open these.

What is troublesome is that there doesn't seem to be any product on the market which comes close to Outlooks abilities to send HTML messages?

I have read up on this subject and learned that we need to acquire something called a digital signature? If we acquire this - then recipients of an email will know WHO they are getting their email FROM!

What is confusing me is that the bulk of viruses seem to be on INCOMING emails! Is this true? If so, then a firewall seems to be a very practical thing to do yet it doesn't seem to prevent all viruses from getting past the network.

Is there someone who can comment on whether it is OK to use Outlook as a means to send email messages? What are the proper precautions to be taken?

I am sorry, but I like to be knowledgable and I like to sound like I know what I am talking about rather than split hairs over things that MIGHT happen.

Margaret.

 

[Graeme Nelson]

A bunch of hasty replies in this thread, most displaying some knowledge, but most also displaying
some ignorance.

(Note: in this message, I am using the word "virus" to refer to computer viruses, worms, trojans,
and any other such e-nasties.)

Yes, Microsoft Outlook is highly susceptible to e-mail delivered viruses, especially as a lot of
them are written specifically to exploit vulnerabilities in Outlook. Not all Windows e-mail clients
are (equally) vulnerable to e-mail viruses: the Netscape/Mozilla e-mail clients have low or nil
vulnerability, and Pegasus Mail (a very powerful e-mail client) has no vulnerability to viruses.
Note: if you open an attachment in an external program and get infected that way, it is _not_ the
e-mail client's fault.

BTW, the Netscape/Mozilla e-mail clients do very good HTML e-mails as well.

While some firewalls can do virus filtering, this is usually not the best (nor preferred) place for
it. As others have said, virus checking on your e-mail server is a good place for it, but that
depends on what your e-mail server is.

The best option is to use an e-mail content filtering program such as MailMarshal or MIMEsweeper
with an antivirus program "plugged in" to it. And not just any antivirus program: this may seem
obvious, but you want an antivirus program that does an excellent job. (I make this point because I
remember reading a review of some antivirus programs several years ago that rated the best program
as the one with the best "Windows 95 look & feel", not the one that detected the most viruses! - no
joke.) Check out the lists on http://www.virusbulletin.com/ and http://www.icsa.net/ . The 2 I
recommend are NOD32 (from Eset - http://www.nod32.com/) for the best antivirus protection, and AVG
(from Grisoft http://www.grisoft.com/) for good but free antivirus protection. Frequent automatic
updating of virus signatures is a must. Multiple (usually 2) antivirus programs is also something
worth considering. We use MailMarshal with NOD32 and McAfee (it scans for viruses with McAfee then
NOD): one time when a new prolific e-mail virus hit, MailMarshal started stopping the viruses as
soon as they hit us because we block all executables, about 2 hours later NOD started detecting
them, and about another 6 hours later McAfee started detecting them. All business _NEED_ a properly
configured e-mail content filter to reduce the risk of infection via e-mail to as close to zero as
possible.

TTFN.,
Graeme