SBS 2008 Support and NDR Spam Filtering in IMF Tune v4.2

Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 support, NDR Spam Filtering and a new Installer are the advancements delivered by IMF Tune v4.2.

Now that SBS2008 reached final release, we made sure IMF Tune is also ready for this platform. Of course support for Exchange 2003 and SBS2003 is here to stay for many years. But at the same time we are making sure IMF Tune is ready for your next upgrade.

The increase in Non-Delivery Report (NDR) Spam and other types of backscatter prompted us to harden our filtering engine in this area. Indeed this is where most of the development work was focused. IMF Tune is now able to apply additional processing to these emails ensuring all available information is employed to identify Spam.

Licensing 

IMF Tune v4.2 is a free update for all IMF Tune v4 users. IMF Tune v4 installations can be upgraded and the license transferred to IMF Tune v4.2.

IMF Tune v4.2 Upgrade Support

The new installer is more robust and is better equipped to identify running processes that need to be stopped for the installation to succeed.

IMF Tune now supports direct upgrading from earlier v4.x builds. In the past upgrading IMF Tune required an uninstall-install cycle. The recommended upgrade procedure for users running earlier v4.x builds now changes. Upgrading simply involves running the v4.2 installer on top of the current installation. In this manner, IMF Tune will automatically make sure to retain the original installation path and the current configuration settings.

The upgrade procedure for IMF Tune version 2 or version 3 does not change. In this case it is still required to perform the uninstall-install cycle. For more details please refer to Upgrade to IMF Tune v4.
 

Announcing IMF Tune v4.1

We are excited to announce the release of IMF Tune v4.1, packed with new functionality.

The top priority for v4.0 was the support of the latest platforms and technologies including 64-bit, Exchange 2007 and Windows 2008. Added to that, we introduced the new configuration interface and some more functionality.

Version 4.1 includes an enhanced feature set, such as:

1. Blocking of Foreign Spam
2. External SCL Rules
3. External SCL Rules UNC Path Support
4. Advanced SCL Rules Description Pane
5. Support for accented Characters
6. HTML Keywords Report in UTF-8

1. Blocking of Foreign Spam

IMF Tune v4.1 now has a blacklist dedicated to blocking emails by character set. The configuration is as simple as the users selecting the languages they would like to block. You just tick the languages. IMF Tune will then block emails using character set encodings typical of these languages.

2. External SCL Rules

External SCL Rules provide a very powerful method for managing and sharing whitelists, blacklists and other rule types. The interface is very similar to that of Simple SCL Rules. However these rules will pull the list of keywords, addresses or IPs to be tested against incoming emails, from external files.

For example, we can now have an external text file listing all IPs to be blocked. Using an External Rule, we instruct IMF Tune to periodically fetch this file and enforce these as a blacklist.

External files are processed periodically based on the configured Schedule. We support two types of schedule configuration interfaces: fixed and custom.

The interface provides plenty of flexibility. We can setup an External SCL Rule against any standard or custom header, email bodies, sender/recipient addresses or IPs. Through these rules we can choose to whitelist/blacklist emails, set the SCL to any fixed value, or to apply an increment/decrement to the current SCL rating.

External Rules support a very simple file format. The file must contain each keyword/address/IP to be enforced in a separate line. Of course depending on the type of rule being setup, file entries will also have additional format requirements. For example, an IP rule will expect to find entries in the format xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (mmm.mmm.mmm.mmm). A rule being applied against sender or recipient addresses will expect address in the format something@something, *@something or *@*.something. Likewise a rule applied to an email header or body supports the usual expression syntax including the use of AND OR NOT operators and double quotes.

The file format is identical to that supported by the white/black list import/export functionality. So it can be useful to export your current lists to see what the file looks like and build on that.

3. External SCL Rules UNC Path Support

The support for UNC paths will be so popular with some of you that it deserved to be highlighted in a separate point. If running IMF Tune on more than one machine, you can just put the keyword files on a shared drive. At IMF Tune we then configure External Rules to pull the keywords from this central file. In many cases this eliminates the need to replicate configuration settings from one machine to another.

4. Advanced SCL Rules Description Pane

IMF Tune v4.1 now adds a description pane for the Advanced SCL Rules list. This allows us to review the rule without having to open it within the wizard.

5. Support for Accented Characters

The previous versions of IMF Tune only supported the use of the standard US ASCII characters when entering values at the various white/black lists and SCL Rules. IMF Tune v4.1 now supports the entire Windows 1252 character set allowing the use of accented characters required in languages such as French and German.

6. HTML Keywords Report in UTF-8

The HTML Keyword report is now using UTF-8 encoding. If the necessary fonts are installed, the report will show the correct information extracted from the original email as well as characters from non-US/Western European languages.

Licensing

IMF Tune v4.1 is a free update for all IMF Tune v4.0 users. IMF Tune v4.0 installations can be upgraded and the license transferred to IMF Tune v4.1.

Upgrades

Upgrading to IMF Tune v4.1 may involve an in-place upgrade or a move to new server hardware. This is especially true since IMF Tune v4.1 supports both Exchange 2003 and 2007. Exchange 2007 requires a migration to a 64-bit platform. In this case IMF Tune would also need to be upgraded.

For complete details on all possible upgrade scenarios check Upgrade to IMF Tune v4.

Version Information

This information applies to IMF Tune v4.1 build number 4.1.008.06. If IMF Tune is already installed you can verify the current build number from the configuration. In earlier IMF Tune versions the build number was available under the WinDeveloper category. In later releases the build is available under the Miscellaneous category.

IMF Tune v4.0 Features

The following is the list of IMF Tune v4.0 improvements over IMF Tune v3.0.

1. Exchange 2007 Support. In all 3 different builds are available for each of Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007 64-bit and Exchange 2007 32-bit.

2. Windows Server 2008 Support. Windows 2008 supports installing Exchange 2007 SP1. IMF Tune Exchange 2007 builds are also supported on this platform.

3. New Configuration Interface. The IMF Tune v4.0 configuration has been recoded from scratch. It looks much better and eliminates various v3.0 usability limitations.

4. New Design for Disk Archiving, Logging and Auto-Replies. Archiving, Logging and Auto-Replies have been moved out of the SCL Threshold configuration. This equates to greater flexibility and simpler configurations.

5. Other Improvements. Amongst other advancements we find the inclusion of IP white/black lists and the insertion of SCLs in legitimate emails. By popular demand IMF Tune v4.0 now allows the insertion of the SCL in the email subject and headers of whitelisted and SCL0 emails.