Password-protected email attachments

[valdous]

Hi everyone,

Does anyone really know what the best practices are in dealing with

password-protected attachments received via email? I'm referring to the email

content filtering level, not the user level.

We've always blocked them and manually reviewed/released. But I'm curious to

know what other companies do and/or what the best practices are. Ive tried

searching the net to no avail.

Do most companies block them? Do they just let them through? Do they get

manually reviewed/released?

Thanks for any info you may have

 

[Anteaus]

Varies. Some mailfilters can be set to disallow zips which cannot be opened

for virus-scanning.

We filter such that IF the message has an attachment of type zip, AND the

body text contains the string 'password' THEN it gets the heave-ho.

There was a virus doing the rounds a few months back which propagates as an

encrypted zip, with the password in the body text. I don't think any of our

users would be daft enough to fall for that, but you never know.

"valdous" wrote:

<span style="color:blue">

> Hi everyone,

>

> Does anyone really know what the best practices are in dealing with

> password-protected attachments received via email? I'm referring to the email

> content filtering level, not the user level.

>

> We've always blocked them and manually reviewed/released. But I'm curious to

> know what other companies do and/or what the best practices are. Ive tried

> searching the net to no avail.

>

> Do most companies block them? Do they just let them through? Do they get

> manually reviewed/released?

>

> Thanks for any info you may have</span>