New Feature "Image scan"

[steven_geerts]

Hello Nation,

Have any of you looked already looked into the new "Image Scan" functionality of Async OS release 6.3?

If so, what are your experiences? (Mainly: what system recourses does it consume)

The function sounds very promising, I'm curious....

Steven

[Pat_ironport]

Hmm, we are still at 6.1.0-301. Where can we download your version 6.3?

[Donald Glynn]

Pat,

AsyncO/S 6.3 is still in limited release not general yet. If you would like to get on the list for 6.3 please submit a ticket through Support.

Don

Hmm, we are still at 6.1.0-301. Where can we download your version 6.3?

[karlyoun]

Hello Nation,

Have any of you looked already looked into the new "Image Scan" functionality of Async OS release 6.3?

If so, what are your experiences? (Mainly: what system recourses does it consume)

The function sounds very promising, I'm curious....

Steven

Steven

If you are interested in Image Analysis, please check with your Account Manager to discuss whether it makes sense for your organization. This feature is very different from Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus.

The intended use case for IronPort Image Analysis is as a monitoring and reporting tool to help enforce company policies on appropriate email usage. It is not intended to be used as an automated system for removing or quarantining inappropriate images.

IronPort Image Analysis uses state of the art technology for real-time scanning of images. While it does a very good job of flagging the majority of inappropriate images, there will be a certain amount that will be missed. Unlike our Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus technologies, which are able to catch the overwhelming majority of undesirable messages, while almost never incorrectly identifying a message as Spam or malware, image scanning technology is not yet accurate enough to rely on to automatically take an action like dropping a message.

Karl Young
Product Support Engineer

[steven_geerts]

Hello Karl,

Thank you for this clear answer. As you described the technology, I think it will fit perfectly to the needs of our "big brother" department.
Currently they get a copy of every message that contains an image, sound file or movie. They check (at least, they say they do) every message for non professional/harmful content.

Currently the number of images entering their mailbox is overwhelming; maybe a tool like Image Scan can reduce the load and forward only the images with a serious amount of "skin-color".

Are there any figures on the load the image scanner will add to the system? We recently replaced our four C600's by C650's because the C600's where running on 100% CPU constantly. I don't think I can request for more budget to add machines within coming two year.

best regards Steven

[karlyoun]

Hello Karl,

Thank you for this clear answer. As you described the technology, I think it will fit perfectly to the needs of our "big brother" department. 
Currently they get a copy of every message that contains an image, sound file or movie. They check (at least, they say they do) every message for non professional/harmful content. 

Currently the number of images entering their mailbox is overwhelming; maybe a tool like Image Scan can reduce the load and forward only the images with a serious amount of "skin-color". 

A couple of points here:

1) IIA only scans images, not movies or sound files.
2) If they really are checking every image, IIA will not replace that. We don't even recommend quarantining based on the IIA score, because there will be False Positives. The best way to use it is to create Content Filters that trigger based on IIA score, but just insert a header (or bcc to a special mailbox). Then run a report periodically and see who is at the top. of the list. Those are the people who warrant closer attention.

Are there any figures on the load the image scanner will add to the system? We recently replaced our four C600's by C650's because the C600's where running on 100% CPU constantly. I don't think I can request for more budget to add machines within coming two year.

best regards Steven

Internal and Beta testing found very minimal impact on a standard mail load. This will depend on what your mail flow is like, what kinds of services you are running, and how many messages have images attached.

If you are load balancing your 4 systems, you can enable IIA on one or two of them and see if there is much performance difference between the ones running IIA and the ones that aren't.

The best way to find out is talk with your sales team about getting a demo key. They can guide you through the setup and creating reports.

-karl