Blocking Spam & Spyware For Dummies^®

by Peter H. Gregory (Woodinville, Washington); Mike Simon

ISBN13: 9780764575914

ISBN10: 0764575910

Format: Paperback

Pub. Date: 2005-04-01

Publisher(s): For Dummies

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Summary

Fight back and save money with these expert tipsFind out what spam and spyware cost your company, and how to stop themWhether yours is a one-person business or a multi-million dollar corporation, here's help giving spammers and spies the bum's rush. Two veterans of the spam wars help you analyze your situation, choose the right solutions, set up and maintain them, and even show the bean-counters why such defenses are essential.Discover how to Understand how spammers get addresses Calculate the cost of spam and spyware Re-engineer your business processes Select spam and spyware filters Manage implementation and maintenance

Author Biography

Peter Gregory, CISA, CISSP, is a career IT guy who has worn just about every hat that could be worn in the Data Processing/Information Systems/Information Technology business. Peter has IT experience in government, banking, nonprofit, legalized gambling, and telecommunications. The Usenet-E-mail-Internet bug bit him in the mid 1980s. He has spent the past eleven years in two wireless telecom companies, working in positions where he develops security policy, security architecture, and security emergency response teams, and is a security consultant in general.
His passion for computers is matched only by his dedication to helping people know how to use information systems — from personal computers to mainframes — more effectively and safely. He achieves this through his speaking appearances at security conferences, in ComputerWorld and other online publications, and through a security consulting company that he cofounded in 2002.

Michael A. Simon works as a computer security consultant in the Seattle area and the northwestern U.S. with clients in banking, e-commerce, health care, and biotechnology. Mike has been working in IT security for around 20 years and wrote his first programs on punched cards for an IBM mainframe in the early 1980s. Although he doesn’t get much chance to exercise his skills in COBOL or Fortran these days, he keeps a deck of blank IBM punch cards around just in case.
For the last 10 years, Mike has been working for the company that he cofounded with Corwin Low when the Internet was more innocent, and convincing people of security’s importance was a difficult task. Mike keeps busy assessing new threats for his clients, lecturing at Seattle University and the University of Washington, and advancing the public service goals of Northwest Security Institute, a non-profit that he helped to found.

Introduction

(1)

About This Book

(1)

Why We Combined Spam and Spyware

(1)

How This Book Is Organized

(2)

Part I: Understanding the Problem

(1)

Part II: Justifying and Selecting Spam and Spyware Filters

(1)

Part III: Deploying Your Chosen Solution

(1)

Part IV: Maintaining Your Defenses

(1)

Part V: The Part of Tens

(1)

Conventions Used in This Book

(1)

Defining Spam, Spyware, and Malware

(1)

Foolish Assumptions

(1)

Icons Used in This Book

(1)

Where to Go from Here

(1)

And the Latest Breaking News

(1)

Write to Us!

(1)

Part I: Understanding the Problem

(60)

Spam and Spyware: The Rampant Menace

(26)

Knowing How Spam and Spyware Affect the Organization

(5)

Increasing e-mail volume

(1)

Draining productivity

(2)

Exposing the business to malicious code

(1)

Creating legal liabilities

(2)

No Silver Bullets: Looking for Ways to Fight Back

(6)

Adding a spam blocker

(4)

Keeping spyware away from workstations

(1)

Other good defense-in-depth practices

(1)

Understanding the role of legislation

(1)

Taking Stock of Your Business

(5)

Talk with people

(1)

Conduct a survey

(1)

Understanding your architecture

(1)

Taking users' skills and attitudes into account

(1)

Evaluating available skills in IT

(1)

Working within your budget

(1)

Justifying Spam and Spyware Control

(1)

Choosing Anti-Spam and Anti-Spyware Solutions

(4)

Types of anti-spam solutions

(1)

What are the key features?

(1)

Choosing the right model

(2)

Sizing for now and the future

(1)

Making the Solution Work

(5)

Creating a good plan

(1)

Setting up a trial

(2)

Training users

(1)

Taking your solution live

(1)

Maintaining the system

(1)

The Spyware Who Loved Me: Stopping Spyware in Its Tracks

(16)

What Is Spyware?

(3)

An information collector

(1)

An information transgressor

(2)

How Spyware Gets In

(2)

Finding holes in the Web browser

(1)

Tagging along in e-mail

(1)

Hiding in software downloads

(1)

Peer-to-peer file sharing

(1)

How Spyware Gets Information from Your Computer

(3)

Hijacking cookies

(1)

Executing programs

(1)

Reading the Clipboard

(1)

Accessing the hard drive

(1)

Spoofing well-known Web pages

(1)

Logging keystrokes

(1)

Fighting Back

(4)

Testing for vulnerabilities

(1)

Patching vulnerabilities

(1)

Scanning and removing spyware

(1)

Preventing spyware from getting a foothold

(1)

Choosing and Using Spyware Blockers

(4)

Understanding the changing market

(1)

Training users and getting their help

(1)

Finding a product that deploys easily

(1)

Using spyware blockers

(1)

Understanding the Enemy: What Really Spawns Spam

(16)

Understanding How Spammers Get E-Mail Addresses

(5)

Harvesting from the Internet

(1)

Buying and stealing addresses

(1)

Directory service attacks

(2)

Giving Filters the Slip: How Spam Messages Seep into Your Inbox

(6)

Poisoning Bayesian filters

(1)

Hash busting

(1)

Snowflaking messages

(1)

Forging From: and Received: headers

(1)

Relaying to hide message origins

(2)

The Economics of Spam

(2)

Making money with spam e-mail

(1)

A black market of bots for relaying spam

(1)

Spam's New Attitude: The Convergence of Spam and Viruses

(1)

Advancing the War to New Fronts: Instant Messages and Text Messages

(2)

Part II: Justifying and Selecting Spam and Spyware Filters

(64)

Calculating ROI for Your Anti-Spam and Anti-Spyware Measures

(18)

Understanding Activity-Based Costing

(2)

Helpdesk example

(1)

Cost-of-e-mail example

(1)

As simple as ABC?

(1)

Understanding Fixed and Variable Costs

(1)

Volume-of-E-Mail Model

(3)

Using industry statistics

(1)

Surveying your users

(1)

Estimating your e-mail costs

(2)

Employee-Productivity Model

(2)

Estimating wasted time

(1)

Turning hours into dollars

(1)

Additional support calls because of spam and spyware-induced problems

(1)

Risk-Avoidance Model

(3)

Risks from chronic exposure to obscene, violent, and hate material

(1)

Risks from Web-site-borne malicious code

(1)

Risks from phishing scams

(1)

Qualitative Justifications

(1)

Executive frustration

(1)

Employee grumblings

(1)

Learning through networking

(1)

Models for Justifying Spyware Filters

(4)

Helpdesk support calls

(1)

Potential loss of corporate information

(1)

Potential loss of custodial data

(1)

Potential loss of employees' private information

(2)

Developing the Battle Plans

(18)

Assessing Your Situation

(4)

Knowing thy present architecture

(2)

Knowing thy bandwidth

(1)

Knowing Your Business Objectives

(1)

Developing Requirements

(7)

What is a requirement?

(2)

Collecting and organizing requirements

(1)

Functional requirements

(1)

Technical requirements

(1)

Business requirements

(3)

Developing or Updating Policy

101

(1)

Re-Engineering Business Processes

102

(3)

Managing user accounts

102

(1)

Managing user workstations

102

(1)

Helpdesk

103

(1)

End-user training and orientation

103

(1)

E-mail administration

104

(1)

Network management

104

(1)

Managing the data center

104

(1)

Defining Roles and Responsibilities

105

(2)

Evaluating Anti-Spam and Anti-Spyware Solutions

107

(26)

Ensuring the Anti-Spam Cure Is Better Than the Original Spam

107

(2)

Choosing a Spam-Filtering Platform: Software, Appliance, or ASP?

109

(10)

Software solution

110

(2)

Appliance solution

112

(1)

Application Service Provider solution

113

(3)

Client-side solution

116

(1)

The solutions side-by-side

117

(2)

Choosing Spyware Filtering: Workstation or Centralized?

119

(4)

Workstation solutions

120

(1)

Centralizing the anti-spyware solution

120

(2)

Hybrid solutions

122

(1)

Evaluating Information from Vendors

123

(6)

Don't believe everything you hear

124

(1)

Calling customer references

125

(1)

Visiting a vendor's customer on-site

126

(1)

Visiting vendor sites

127

(1)

Other ways to obtain vendor information

128

(1)

Evaluating Anti-Spam and Anti-Spyware Vendors

129

(4)

Understanding vendors' long-term product strategies

129

(2)

Twisting vendors' arms to get the deal

131

(2)

Part III: Deploying Your Chosen Solution

133

(74)

Training Users and Support Staff

135

(14)

The Many Methods of Training

135

(6)

Offering effective seminars

136

(2)

Creating paper user guides

138

(2)

Posting user guides online

140

(1)

Training Users

141

(3)

Looking at the technology from a user's point of view

142

(1)

Explaining the filter to users

142

(2)

Training Administrators

144

(2)

Put yourself in administrators' shoes

145

(1)

Including practice in the training

145

(1)

Give slightly more than needed

146

(1)

Training the Helpdesk Staff

146

(3)

Anticipating user questions and issues

147

(1)

Building a knowledge base

148

(1)

Planning the Rollout

149

(28)

Sketching Out a Plan

150

(4)

Involving the right people

150

(1)

Planning for disaster

151

(2)

Keeping your objectives in mind

153

(1)

Scheduling

153

(1)

Allocating Resources

154

(8)

Whose time do you need?

155

(3)

Estimating time for key tasks

158

(1)

Money, money, money

159

(1)

Rounding up the hardware and software

160

(1)

Working with outside resources

160

(2)

Tracking Tasks

162

(1)

Putting Together a Spam Filter Trial

163

(10)

Developing measurable success criteria

164

(1)

Performing tests

165

(5)

Selecting users for a trial

170

(1)

Evaluating trial results

171

(1)

Incorporating lessons learned into your deployment plan

172

(1)

Planning a Spyware Filter Trial

173

(4)

Needed: Measurable tests and results

174

(1)

Identifying false positives

174

(1)

Users' chores

174

(1)

Nondisruptive browser use

175

(2)

Rolling Out to the Enterprise

177

(16)

Implementing Spam Filtering

177

(10)

Installing a software solution

178

(2)

Plugging in a hardware solution

180

(1)

Cutting over an ASP solution

181

(1)

Taking care of the administrative details

181

(5)

Measuring early results

186

(1)

Implementing Spyware Filtering

187

(2)

Starting with a trial installation

187

(1)

Installing throughout your business

188

(1)

Creating backout plans in case something goes awry

189

(1)

Keeping Everything under Control

189

(4)

Early warning signs of trouble

190

(1)

Changing the plan in mid-sentence

191

(1)

Testy testers

192

(1)

Supporting Users

193

(14)

Understanding Common Support Scenarios

194

(3)

Gathering information for support scenarios

194

(3)

Documenting support scenarios

197

(1)

Equipping Support Staff with Tools and Knowledge

197

(6)

Seeing what the user sees

198

(3)

Knowledge

201

(2)

Measuring the Support Effort

203

(4)

Tracking numbers of calls

203

(1)

Tracking types of calls

204

(1)

Tracking the effort required to solve problems

205

(2)

Part IV: Maintaining Your Defenses

207

(60)

Everyday Maintenance

209

(10)

Managing Quarantines

210

(4)

Involving end-users

210

(1)

Administrative maintenance

211

(1)

Automating quarantine management

212

(2)

Managing Whitelists

214

(1)

Maintaining user whitelists

214

(1)

Maintaining systemwide whitelists

215

(1)

Managing Filter Rules

215

(2)

Avoid specific rules that solve specific problems

216

(1)

Monitor how effective specific rules are

217

(1)

Managing Updates

217

(2)

Updating filter rules

217

(1)

Updating the software (or engine)

218

(1)

Handling Thorny Issues

219

(32)

Coping with Performance Issues

220

(2)

Dealing with interruptions in mail service

220

(1)

Law of Big Numbers

221

(1)

Dealing with loss of productivity from spyware infestation

221

(1)

Setting Realistic User Expectations

222

(9)

False negatives: ``Your inbox won't be spam free''

223

(3)

False positives: When good mail looks bad

226

(4)

Restricting Web browser configuration

230

(1)

Identifying and Handling Business Issues

231

(8)

Figuring out legal issues

231

(2)

Uprooting hidden costs

233

(1)

Preparing for ASP outages

234

(1)

Developing skills to support the spam filter

235

(3)

What about when spam actually works?

238

(1)

Supporting spyware filters and scanning

239

(1)

Stopping Deliberate Attacks

239

(12)

Block Web bugs and other malicious content

240

(3)

Don't make yourself a target for Joe Jobs

243

(1)

Prevent spammers from verifying or listing e-mail addresses

243

(1)

Make the Web spiders starve

244

(1)

Viruses --- don't be part of the problem

245

(1)

Shut out the robot army

245

(2)

Educate users about spammy NDRs

247

(1)

Protect users from phishing scams

248

(1)

Be aware of single-target spyware

249

(2)

Defense in Depth: Providing Layers of Protection

251

(16)

Understanding Defense in Depth

251

(1)

Deploying Security Patches

252

(3)

Patches eliminate vulnerabilities

253

(1)

Keeping pace with viruses and worms

253

(1)

Patching made easier with dedicated tools

254

(1)

Managing Anti-Everything

255

(4)

Antivirus

256

(2)

Anti-popup

258

(1)

Filtering incoming e-mail attachment extensions

258

(1)

Turning off VRFY on your e-mail server

259

(1)

Managing Firewalls

259

(3)

Intranet firewalls

259

(1)

Filtering inbound as well as outbound

260

(2)

Keeping One Eye on the Future

262

(5)

Watching the spam-filtering market as it matures

262

(2)

Emerging standards

264

(2)

Watching the maturing anti-spyware market

266

(1)

Part V: The Part of Tens

267

(54)

Ten Spam-Filtering Solutions for the Enterprise

269

(10)

Brightmail AntiSpam 6.0

270

(1)

Postini Perimeter Manager

271

(1)

CipherTrust IronMail

272

(1)

FrontBridge TrueProtect Message Management Suite

273

(1)

Trend Micro Spam Prevention Solution

274

(1)

McAfee SpamAssassin

274

(1)

Sophos PureMessage

275

(1)

Tumbleweed MailGate

276

(1)

Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway

277

(1)

MailFrontier Gateway Server

278

(1)

Ten Keys to Successful Spam Filtering

279

(8)

Knowing Your Users

279

(1)

Knowing the Product

280

(1)

Matching the Product to the Users

281

(1)

Training Users and Admins

282

(1)

Preparing to Troubleshoot

282

(1)

Preparing a Backout Plan

283

(1)

Revisiting Your Policies

284

(1)

Creating a Global Whitelist

284

(1)

Testing the Solution

285

(1)

Monitoring after You Deploy

285

(1)

Epilogue: Reviewing Your Original Business Objectives

286

(1)

Ten Spam-Related Issues Most Enterprises Face

287

(8)

Users Don't Check Their Quarantines

287

(1)

Users Don't Manage Their Whitelists

288

(1)

Too Many Helpdesk Calls

288

(1)

Important Messages Lost or Delayed

289

(1)

The Filter Vendor Exited the Market

290

(1)

If your solution is an ASP

290

(1)

If your solution is in-house

290

(1)

Your Filter Is No Longer Effective

291

(1)

Spam That Makes It through the Filter Is Still a Liability

291

(1)

Mail Delivery Becomes More Complex

292

(1)

Your Internet Connection Seems Slow

293

(1)

My Company's Products Smell Like Spam (Or, I Work for Hormel)

294

(1)

Ten Spyware-Filtering Solutions for Businesses

295

(12)

Ad-Aware Professional SE

296

(1)

SpywareBlaster 3.2

297

(1)

SpyBot - Search & Destroy

298

(1)

eTrust PestPatrol Anti-Spyware

299

(1)

Norton AntiVirus 2005

300

(1)

McAfee Anti-Spyware Enterprise Edition Module

301

(1)

Panda Platinum Internet Security 2005

302

(1)

SpyHunter

303

(1)

Yahoo! Anti-Spy Toolbar

303

(1)

Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware

304

(3)

Ten Online Resources for Resolving Spam and Spyware

307

(6)

The Spamhaus Project

307

(1)

Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE)

308

(1)

Internet Privacy For Dummies

309

(1)

The SPAM-L Tracking Spam FAQ

309

(1)

Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

310

(1)

SpywareInfo

310

(1)

Spychecker

311

(1)

GetNetWise

311

(1)

ScamBusters.org

312

(1)

Anti-Phishing Working Group

312

(1)

Ten Keys to Successful Spyware Filtering

313

(8)

Understanding the Problem

313

(2)

Educating Your Users

315

(1)

Updating Your Policies

315

(1)

Choosing Products Wisely

316

(1)

Planning the Installation Judiciously

317

(1)

Testing Your Solution Thoroughly

317

(1)

Equipping the Helpdesk

318

(1)

Monitoring after Implementation

319

(1)

Reporting to Management

319

(1)

Watching the Product Market

320

(1)

Appendix A: Spam- and Spyware-Filtering Project Plan

321

(6)

Appendix B: Spam- and Spyware-Filtering Project Requirements

327

(14)

Common Requirements

328

(7)

Spam-Specific Requirements

335

(3)

Spyware-Specific Requirements

338

(3)

Appendix C: Glossary

341

(8)

Index

349

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