Frequently Asked Questions
Symantec Mail Security

Question:
As an email user, what does all this mean to me?  What do I need to do different?

Answer:

1. You should receive all legitimate email that is sent to you.
2. Spam will get caught and not be sent to you (see below for possible exceptions).
3. You won't have to check a spam quarantine file to sort out legitimate mail from spam (see below).
4. Ultimately you should see little or no impact in your regular email routine.

Question:
I'm concerned that if I don't have access to a spam quarantine, I might miss a message that I should have received.  What do I do? 

Answer:
Follow the usual process within your Department/Agency to get IT assistance or support.  Your IT staff can submit a support (Footprints) ticket to DII and we will check the quarantine to see if something addressed to you was caught.  If it was, we will forward that mail on to you.

You can also call the DII Help Desk at 828-3544 for assistance.
 

Please note:

If you are the IT support person filing the Footprints ticket on behalf of a user, please make sure you choose:

Type:  Desktop Application
Sub Type:   MS Outlook
Category:  SMS
Description field:  Enter the email address of the sender
 

Question:
People in our office have had some concerns about SMS blocking emails. One example would be, say I send an email to someone@yahoo.com with a potential blockable key word in the subject line, if they reply to the email, will SMS block it because of the key words in the subject, or is it smart enough that it would allow it because it's a reply to email that was sent from state.vt.us?

Answer:

We are not blocking email based on content at this time (bad language, adult content, etc) so the emails referred to in this question wouldn't be blocked anyway.

The spam filters use a combination of sophisticated techniques to determine if something is spam. It is only partially based upon actual content of the email and then only if the inbound mail passes the other tests first.

Please go back to the Exchange project page, select the Symantec link and follow the quick link on the Symantec site labeled "How it works" for an explanation of how these spam filters actually work.  This only takes a few minutes and you will find it helpful.

Question:
I used to get a DII-BSF400 Spam Quarantine email in my inbox every morning. Will I continue to receive this?

Answer:
Good news! No, you won’t! With the Symantec Mail Security appliances (known as SMS) there will only be a global quarantine that the Help Desk can access.  There will not be user quarantines such as we have today. 

These SMS mail security appliances utilize best-of-breed technology that results in 97% of all spam being captured and a documented false positive rate (false positives are valid emails that are captured as spam)  of less than one in one million messages received.  This means that you will get the emails that you are supposed to get and are not likely to see any spam in your inbox. 

Question:
Before DII switched from Barracuda to SMS I had a few emails that were caught on Barracuda. How can I get those?

Answer:
You can still log onto Barracuda until May 16, 2008. 

Question:
How long will spam be kept on the new SMS appliances?

Answer:
DII will retain spam for 30 days to start with and as we develop higher confidence in the accuracy of the appliances, we will look to decrease the number of days we retain spam

Question:
I’ve received spam in my Outlook inbox/mailbox. What do I do?

Answer:
In the event that spam filters through to your mailbox you can place it in the Spam Complain Folder.  The folder is located under Public Folders -> All Public Folders -> Spam - Complain.  You may also forward that email directly to the spam complain folder using the following email address:

SPAM-Complain@state.vt.us