Anti-Virus Overview

FTGate offers various levels of support for different anti-virus products.

  • Full support
    This level of support is offered where the Anti-Virus vendors have given FTGate Technology access to their anti-virus API. At the time of writing these are AVG, Sophos and Panda.
     

  • Partial support
    This level of support applies to products whose vendors have not supplied an API with which to access their product.  In this mode the level of scanning and error reporting will depend on the basic features of the scanner. Scanners supported in this mode include Norton, McAfee et al

How it works

When a message is received it is parsed to determine if their are any attachments in the message. If there are any attachments then FTGate extracts each attachment into a folder on the hard disk. It then attempts to either scan the file (if there is full support) or open the file to read back its contents.

If the file was infected the virus scanner will either report an error or prevent access to the file, delete or quarantine the file, in which case the attempt to read the file would fail and FTGate would know the attachment was infected. It would then move the whole message to a quarantine folder and notify the postmaster.

Will it work with my Anti-Virus product

There is a simple way to determine if FTGate scanner interface will work with your anti-virus product. The following steps will determine compatibility:

NOTE: THIS TEST USES THE STANDARD EICAR ANTI-VIRUS TEST SIGNATURE. IT IS NOT A VIRUS. IT IS USED TO TEST THAT ANTI-VIRUS PACKAGES ARE CORRECTLY INSTALLED AND WORKING.

Create a new text file on your desktop called eicar.txt (right click the desktop and select “New | Text Document”

Cut the following line from this document and past it into eicar.txt

X5O!P%@AP[4PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

Save the file

Rename the file eicar.com

Make sure that your anti-virus product is enabled

double click on eicar.com to execute the program

If your anti-virus package prevented access to the file by either denying access, deleting or quarantining the file, then your scanning package is compatible with FTGate. If it allowed the program to run then your anti-virus package is not compatible and virus scanning is not an option on your system.

NOTE: You should not set your anti-virus scanner to repair infected files. If you do this FTGate, will be allowed to access the file and it will appear that the file is not infected. FTGate will then permit the original message containing the infected attachment to be delivered, it will not replace the old attachment with the disinfected version.

 

NOTE: You are responsible for ensuring that your use of an anti-virus package with this mail server, and in this manner, does not violate any licences you may have with your anti-virus vendor. If you are in any way unsure about the licensing of your anti-virus product and whether it may be used in this manner you should clarify the situation with your anti-virus vendor before enabling anti-virus support. FTGate Technology and its agents will not be held responsible for any licence violations that occur.

Alternative Scanner Support

From time to time FTGate Technology will release additional modules that will allow FTGate to access different anti-virus packages. Check our web site for additional modules that might be available.