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The Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) is your Answer to the Canadian Anti Spam Legislation (CASL)


July 2, 2014


The recent introduction of the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) requires Canadian companies to verify whether individuals have given permission to receive messages that may be marketing or otherwise considered SPAM.

The Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) has several built-in features to help companies adhere to CASL guidelines. The Outbound controls on the ESA are focused on ensuring senders are not seen as a SPAM source and that messages to clients are validated against data sources. Optional settings such as Per-sender Throttling and High Volume Mail Detection can also assist in ensuring no unauthorized individuals can send bulk email. The following list details some of the built-in features that can be enabled for outbound mail. 

  1. Per-Sender Throttling – Set a pre-defined number of messages per user and throttle users that exceed those limits. Exceptions can be made by email address.
  2. Per Destination and Virtual Gateway Throttling – Using destination controls you can set a defined number of connections, messages per connection and recipients per message per destination domain. This can be applied system-wide or per virtual gateway.
  3. High Volume Mail Detection – HVM allows for Message Filters to be created to look for patterns such as subjects, or senders and if a pattern is seen more than a defined number of times. HVM allows for actions such as quarantine or drop to be applied to the mail.
  4. Outbound Mail Policies – Regulates flow of mail based on opt-in/out information (LDAP) – If existing opt-out/in data exists, leverage an LDAP front-end to the data so that it can be queried quickly to the ESA for verification if the client has opt-out (or opt-in) data and block or allow the message to the recipient.
  5. Outbound scanning for Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam – Use of the Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus engines can be leveraged to scan inbound and outbound mail to detect spam messages.
  6. Outbound Content and Message Filtering – The filter engines (Message and Content) can be used to look for dictionary matches, recipient counts, nested loops, and other parameters, which all can be used to control outbound mail flow.

For more information on how the Cisco Email Security Appliance can help your organization conform to CASL contact your Cisco Sales representative to book a demo.

Got questions? Ask them in the comments section below.

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