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Can IronPort brand outgoing e-mail?

keithsauer507
Level 5
Level 5

I know I can make an Outgoing content filter to apply a disclaimer text resource, and I know I can go into text resources to write a disclaimer, but we are looking for the ability to 'brand' all outgoing e-mails with our company logo and standard disclaimer at the bottom.

Currently we use a MailMethods appliance, which does this... but we may look at getting rid of the Mail Methods device, so we want a simpler in house way to do this.  MailMethods also can apply advertisements to e-mail, but that has not been proved sucessful, so were scrapping that idea.

In Text Resources, I tried to make a disclaimer with HTML to point to an image hosted on our webserver, but it appears as it if converts this to text and does not actually display the rendered HTML.

<html>

<img src="https://www.ourwebsite/img/company-logo.png">

</html>

I've tried variations, without the html tags, but it made no difference.

So is this something Ironport can do, or do we have to back up a step and see if Exchange 2007 can do this proccessing before it gets to the IronPort in the delivery path.

Email should be branded like:

Company logo

horizontal line

Body of E-mail

horizontal line

Dislaimer ... The information contained herein is intended only for the recipient of this message. blah blah blah.

Thanks!

1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

There is an action that says skip remaining content filters so you could use this to weed out those emails that already have the disclaimer and then have the next filter action add disclaimer text.  I don't know why the test for RE: and FW: are not working, but be aware that other countries use different abbreviations for RE: and FW:

View solution in original post

12 Replies 12

exMSW4319
Level 3
Level 3

We've been told that it's not possible to do this with disclaimers. I forget the exact reason our vendor gave, but I think it's to do with the difficulty of judging where and whether to inject the code into an outgoing message. A block of HTML obviously has no place in a text-formatted message and lots of strange results can be obtained by slapping the same block into an HTML message without regard to the existing code. IronPort KB 988 appears to bear this out. Cisco aren't alone in this (our outgoing smarthost were equally reticent on the point) and it's not the first time I've seen the request on this forum. However, people evidently try (see IronPort KB 1050 and a useful tip in 988 on disclaimer aggregation). There's the "HTML Disclaimer" thread from 16/10/2008, though things may have changed since then. There was also the "logo in disclaimer" thread from 26/11/2009 that mentions feature request ID 7981.

However, you mention that your interior mail system is Exchange and I believe it's possible to force a fancy sig at the Outlook client if you have sufficient conformity and authority to do so. I'll have to ask our technical lead tomorrow.

To follow up on my earlier reply, yes it is possible to force an Outlook signature simply by adding the appropriate bit of VBS to the client's logon script. We do it using code adapted from that found on the open Internet, but for that reason and because it's not germane to IronPort appliances I must be both obtuse and brief: were you to Google for +VBS +"peter aarts" +"brad marsh" you might well find the VBS you seek.

jmonrad
Level 1
Level 1

Hi Keith,

It is possible to use HTML in disclaimers on Ironport. You just need to make sure you use the

 tag.

See more here:

https://supportforums.cisco.com/message/2000676#2000676

In addition to the previous post, there is this knowledge base article,

Can I stamp messages with HTML-formatted content?

Knowledge Base Answer ID: 1581

http://tinyurl.com/2wfmuay

In the above KB article, there is reference to a feature request # that you can add your name to so that ESA Product Management knows that a lot of customers are interested in this feature and want it put on an upcoming AsyncOS release.

Best,

Kevin

Hello!

I figured out a work around.  The disclaimer template required content in order to work.  Add

.

to your code and it will be accepted as content.  The period is barely noticible in our logo and is pretty much virtually invisible to the human eye at first glance.  Besides...it's the logo that is going to catch your recipients eye!

NOTE: a blank space ( ) will NOT be accepted as content...I've already tried

Ok I am reviving this because I want to see if we can stop the branding from nesting multiple times in replies.  I've tried if the subject header does not begin with "RE:" or "FW:" and that didn't work.  So my very last rule I am adding a mail header called branding with a value of true.  Then in my branding statement that happens before that I check if mail header branding does not equal true then brand the e-mail.

Well neither of these are working.  So if you have 4 replies well you have 4 images and duplicated confidentiality statements.  Testing to an external account g-mail initially looks good, but they have a little {...} button that exapands the whole e-mail "thread" where at the very bottom you see all the duplicated branding / disclaimer messages (one for each reply).

Could you not search the body text for some string from your confidentiality statements that is very unlikely to occur otherwise and only apply the branding if that text is not found? 

Well if I try the message body and I want to paste in our img src= string (since we have a banner image)... the only thing I have under message body is "Contains Text", "Contains smart identifier" or "contains a term in content dictionary".  There is no option for does not "contain text"

If I go to Subject header there is a drop down where you can choose contains, does not contain, equals, does not equal, etc... They don't have this level of granularity for the actual message body.

Still for whatever reason it wouldn't trigger on RE: or FW: if I tried this:
If Subject Header Does Not Begin With RE:

or

If Subject Header Does Not Begin With FW:

then

Add Disclaimer Text add-footer("Disclaimer-Footer")

This still added the footer in replies which is a direct image reference to a banner on our webserver for this purpose, followed by a confidentiality statement under a horizontal rule.

There is an action that says skip remaining content filters so you could use this to weed out those emails that already have the disclaimer and then have the next filter action add disclaimer text.  I don't know why the test for RE: and FW: are not working, but be aware that other countries use different abbreviations for RE: and FW:

Oh that's true.  Our branding test is element 9 in outgoing content filters.  Element 8 is actually a test to disable branding with it's action to skip remaining content filters and process to the next action.  Element 8 looks at the destination e-mail address for mail sent to SMS gateways (email to TXT) like @vtext.com, @txt.att.net, @tomomail.net, etc...  It also ensures that mail sent from 3 contracted employees who work for us, but under another company do not get our branding.  So this step works and I guess I can try adding another line in here.  Good thought, thanks!

Thanks David for the tip.  I was able to use my existing "DisableBranding" policy and add another line that checks the body for the direct http link that is in the which is a part of our footer / disclaimer.

I tested with 4 replies and there was only 1 banner / disclaimer so this works!

Valter Da Costa,  I appreciate the link.  However I do not know anything really about the command line of the Ironport.  We always use the web gui.  If you had instructions for the web gui version that would have been good to know.  David's tip did help so this is now fixed.

Folks,

Please try the approach described in the Technical Article below:

How do I stop duplicate disclaimer stamping?

Knowledge Base Answer ID: 1545

http://tools.cisco.com/squish/774C2

Kindly let us know if that helps.

Regards,

-Valter

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