February 23, 2006

Junk e-mail defense bolstered

Information Technology has implemented two measures for the E-mail Defense System (EDS) to address the dramatic increase in junk e-mail and its serious impact on networked University resources.

IT estimates the system is catching approximately 20 million junk and virus messages each month.

Although the EDS has proven highly effective in blocking junk e-mail, the volume of junk e-mail has increased dramatically.

The following took effect Feb. 20:

• All e-mail with a greater than “99” junk probability rating against EDS tests will be deleted, effectively reducing the amount of junk e-mail being held in quarantine. This change will not affect undergraduate students or alumni because their e-mail deletion thresholds are currently less than “99.” For more information about current threshold levels, go to www.it.northwestern.edu/security/eds/how/index.html. Users have the option to opt out of the system. Instructions for opting out can be found at www.it.northwestern.edu/security/eds/features/options.html.

• Anonymous directory queries from off-campus will be blocked to help prevent the harvesting of northwestern.edu e-mail addresses by known spammers  — a contributing factor to the recent increase in junk e-mail. This means anyone e-mailing from off-campus must authenticate to the Northwestern Network with Virtual Private Network (VPN) to use directory queries from their e-mail client. Instructions for downloading and configuring VPN are available at www.it.northwestern.edu/oncampus/vpn/. For more information about anonymous directory queries, go to www.it.northwestern.edu/security/spam/directory.html.

There is no change to obtaining directory information from the Northwestern online directory. Community members can still access full online directory information from off-campus by using the “authenticated access” service available at http://directory.northwestern.edu/. Non-authenticated users will continue to receive limited directory information.

IT recommends that you disable the auto delivery of the EDS daily quarantine digest to your e-mail inbox if you are not reviewing it on a daily basis. This can be easily accomplished by https://eds.northwestern.edu:28080/options.cgi. This action will further reduce the processing effort required of the system and further improve performance.

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Additional information is available at www.it.northwestern.edu/transitions/2006/eds-security.html.

Questions can be directed to the IT Support Center at (847) 491-HELP (4357) or consultant@northwestern.edu.