Katharion Anti-Spam

Over the last year our internet has been very slow and over loaded with traffic. We have been hosting five different websites and an exchange server on the internet connection that is also shared with our staff offices.

The problem being, we were getting around 10,000 spam messages per day hitting our servers- most to email addresses that did not exsist on our network.

About three months ago- we swtiched to Katharion (http://www.katharion.com/) to filter our emails before they hit our internet connection/server.

We then configured our ISA server to only let incomming connections from Katharions allowed subnets and IP address ranges.

It has worked very well- and we get very few false positives.

Since- in the last month we have configured LDAPs with a secure certificate issued on both of our ends to sync our user accounts from Exchange / Active Directory up to Katharion automatically.

This allows us to do single sign on with active directory accounts to a service that is not even located on our campus. We are very pleased with there service.

Adventures of ISA Server

Well over the Christmas holiday, one of our great volunteers and I finally, after two years of holding off for rediculous excuses put of firewall in place. We redid all the IP's of our internal and external network, moved all trafic over to ISA Server, and everything has been working great.

Just for some humor here is some of the mistakes we have made.

1. Made FTP read only

2. Accidentally blocked all traffic comming into the building

3. Had FTP and Web on the same ISA policy, blocking FTP traffic since web came first.

4. Trying many different ways to get VPN to work, none of which have been really sucessful. It seems to work some of the time but not all of the time. I am wondering if we really need to be running DNS and all those other services on the ISA box. That has worked the best so far. Any one else have any experience with this?

Well that was this last Christmas break...

SPAM Statistics

We have been using Computer Associates for about two years now and I have not really looked a logs much. As with any one in the church IT world, its just busy and when you know the SPAM filtering is working, why really bother to see how many its catching. Here are the statistics for the 2006 year. We have caught alot of SPAM, and its was very cheap to do so.

Microsoft Office 2007

Well I did it. I ordered five copies (which is the minimum for volume license customers) to begin testing Microsoft Office 2007. I have been running the beta for a few months now and I really like the new user interface and some of the new features. I have no plans on rolling this out to all our staff any time in the near future- we are all on Office 2003 right now. Maybe by the end of next year we will go a head and do that.

What are some other people thoughts?

Current Projects

Well I thought I would just share some current projects I have right now. 1. Installing and configuring ISA Server as our firewall with CA Secure Content Manager for webfiltering 2. Researching and implementing a backup system with policies to follow. (we currently are really not prepared for much of a disaster.) 3. Finish cabling our youth complex for future check-in PC's. (cables are run and just need crimped and punched down.) 4. Continue to research and eventually come to a conclusion with the help of a great team of people on a new ChMS. 5. Website redesign and implementation of many new features (online giving, small groups manangement, teachers section, worship leaders section... etc- some currently done through a dotnetnuke portal system) Well thats the big stuff.

Email SPAM Filtering

Over the last year, our spam has continuously increased and it has been a constant battle to keep under control. We are using some really powerful software form Computer Associates called Secure Content Manager. Once it is up, it works well. The ammount of time it takes to get it up and working well is the problem, it also takes alot of resources from the server, and requires a SQL database. Today the though passed through my head to look more into Postini for that aspect of the network. I know alot of other church's and businesses are using it. What are some some of yall's thoughts on it? -Austin

Fellowship One (Part 2)

Well its over. We had our second demo with Fellowship One today. We ruled them out as an option about a year ago, when their feature set just did not provide what we were looking for, but they made a second appearance on our list when they took the initiative to contact us. We were very impressed with the new features and the direction of the company.

Symantec Charity-

After many years, it looks as if Symantec has finally come on board with charity pricing. About two years ago now, we left Symantec and switched to Computer Associates for our anti-virus solution. After about two years, we finally have it working! I am excited to finally be able to look into Symantec again, since they are known for a quality product line.

Fellowship One

After many weeks of research by our deacon of IT and my self, we now have another demo set with Fellowship One for tommorow afternoon. I am excited to see what they have to offer as far as some new features. The last demo we had with them was about a year ago, when we started throwing around the idea of switching to a new ChMS, and well... we were just not that impressed. But after talking with other church's and reading they look to have come along ways. I am really excited to see what they have to say about their new "self check-in" system, that would not be run by volunteers.

Anti Virus / Spam Filtering / Content Filtering

We have been using computer associates for our SPAM filtering and content filtering using there Secure Content Manager software, and have been using E-Trust Antivirus for our anti virus software. We have had alot of problems with CA, but there technical support is unbelivable. They will remotely assist us on our server with about any problem, and even help configure it. I guess what I am trying to ask is what is everyone else out there using? Any one else using CA for anything? I am excited about Symantec having Charity pricing!

ChMS Options (2)

Well like I said in the last entry were down to some final choices for our ChMS. Arena is diffently the only one we are really looking at, but I am excited to see what Fellowship Technologies has added to Fellowship One in the last year. Who knows maybe they will make the list again. The main features we are looking for are these: 1. Will work as a staff intranet 2. Has a qucik search for looking up people, addresses and numbers 3. Self- touch screen check in 4. Easly do reports of different feilds 5. Work as a website content managment system 6. A database that our youth staff likes 7. The abilitiy to do a mass email through the software 8. Work as a tool for communications department to keep track of bulletin and news letter requests I am sure I am missing some, but thats a good start.

ChMS Options

I had a great conversation today with Tony Dye form Perimeter Church today about different ChMS options, and we are both running into a lot of the same problems. There is really not one option out there that is good enough. I really like the idea of the Microsoft CRM, even though I have not heard much about it. Something about a bunch of companies working together and a choice of companies to work with for competitive pricing sounds like a great idea. Latly our church has been leaning towards Arena, mainly because we want to keep Shelby for the financial side, and the fact that Arena will have the option to add, change and manipulate the code. New Covenant will most likely be switching to Arena in the coming year if all goes as planned. It may seem like a coincidence, but is any one else observing that there are a lot of church’s out there looking to switch to a new, or do an original purchase of a ChMS? Well that is where we are at right now on our decision process with Arena and other ChMS’s.