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:

> 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