The best benefit of Mail essentials is that it works day and night without my needing to worry about it doing its job - and thats important to a public safety agency that might need its email at a moments notice for any kind of emergency or disaster. - Rod Conway, Deputy Fire Marshall at Keizer Fire District, US

 The Keizer Fire District in Oregon, USA deals with emergencies every day but one emergency it never wants to have to face is a problem with its email system. This is why the District invested in Mail essentials for Exchange, GFI's email content checking and anti-virus solution for Microsoft Exchange Server.

Located in the Mid-Willamette Valley, the Keizer Fire District is a government agency providing fire and emergency services to most of the city of Keizer. It began in 1948 and is governed by an elected five-member Board of Directors that sets policy. The District covers 10 square miles encompassing 33,000 residents and approximately 500 commercial entities.

"We respond to emergency and non-emergency calls 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Year 2000, we responded to over 2,200 calls for service, ranging from heart attacks to hazardous materials incidents," explained Rod Conway, Deputy Fire Marshal.

The District operates with 17 career staff (the Fire Chief, three Division Chiefs, two Captains, one Deputy Fire Marshal, 10 Firefighter/ Emergency Medical Technicians), 55 Volunteer Firefighters, and 15 Explorer Scouts. It has three fire engines, a ladder truck, an Advanced Life Support ambulance, a Grass truck, a rescue truck, a reserve ambulance and several staff vehicles out of one station.

The need to content check all email
When the Keizer Fire District decided to give its career Firefighters Internet email access to allow better communication with other fire and emergency agencies, the main concern was how to avoid email-related problems, particularly since in Oregon - as in several other US states - email is considered to be public record.

"We wanted email access as a tool to help us in our work, but did not want it to add to our load by ever becoming an emergency itself," Mr. Conway smiled. To deal with this issue, the department established a strict computer use policy and then sought an email gateway product to help enforce it.

"The Fire Chief, Greg Frank, felt that it was in our best interest to content check all our outgoing emails for inappropriate content to protect the image of the Keizer Fire District and to watch for inappropriate or damaging inbound email, as well as to ensure compliance with our new computer use policy," Mr. Conway pointed out, adding that everyone's email is monitored, from the Fire Chief's to the Secretary's.

Another key consideration concerned email viruses and attacks. "Being a government agency supported largely by tax dollars, we felt it was only right to be good stewards of the public's money and protect our network from harmful viruses, as well as preventing viruses from being emailed from our system to others," Mr. Conway affirmed.

The task of finding a product that could offer email content filtering and anti-virus protection was Mr. Conway's responsibility, as he monitors the Fire District's computer network and takes care of the majority of computer issues and budget. So he made it his goal to find "the most economical product that could do the job".

Easy installation and administration
Yet, network administration is hardly his prime role. As Deputy Fire Marshal, Mr. Conway responds to fires for fire investigation and/or to assist Command Staff with logistics during large incidents, supports emergency efforts in the event of a natural disaster, coordinates the paging of staff and volunteers, conducts annual fire and life safety evaluations for businesses, issues fireworks sales and display permits, and more besides.

His official working week runs from Monday to Friday but Mr. Conway is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week for after-hours public emergencies, 365 days a year. Therefore, it was imperative for him that the District's email security product would install quickly and easily, be simple to administer, and not tax the department's mail server.

"I spent about a week reviewing different products, such as MailSweeper, Message Inspector, and others before choosing Mail essentials. After all my research, I was sold on Mail essentials. I placed the order for the product in August 2000 and have not regretted it," Mr. Conway declared.

His satisfaction with Mail essentials is multi-faceted. "The savings associated with Mail essentials are indescribable," he enthused. "I figure even if just one VBS type of virus infected us, that would equate to about $2,000 in time and expenses to get the problem taken care of, not counting my time lost taking care of public safety issues. Mail essentials prevents that."

Mr. Conway is also impressed with product quality as well as its ease of use: "The product is a 'no-brainer' in setup and administration. In fact, when I installed both the 3.5 and later the 2000 version of Mail essentials, I didn't need the manual, even with my level of expertise! At the same time, its integration with Exchange 2000 is very smooth and works very well."

The Keizer Fire District is particularly pleased with Mail essentials as it offers the right mix of features that it was seeking, including content checking, disclaimers, attachment blocking, and good product support.

Virus-free emailing
"Content checking was main feature we were looking for, and Mail essentials does this very well, either checking against whole words or part of words or phrases. We also wanted to add a disclaimer to each outgoing mail that indicated that the email message was intended for the person it was sent to, and that it had been checked for viruses. In fact, I would take it personally if one of our users sent a virus to someone causing damage to their computer systems," Mr. Conway stressed.

He is keen to point out that with Mail essentials he has peace of mind about this issue, as the product quarantines certain extensions "meaning I don't have to worry about harmful viruses".

Experience has shown Mr. Conway that having anti-virus protection is not enough: "Due to our Fire District running Mail essentials for Exchange Server 5.5, we were able to filter out all of the AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs virus, which our Symantec anti-virus product failed to catch. We received 12 copies in one day alone with all being caught by Mail essentials. Yet, I could not even download new virus definitions from Symantec until nine hours after Mail essentials quarantined the first AnnaKournikova virus."

Cost-effective package
Elaborating further on the department's use of the product, Mr. Conway affirmed: "One of the items I especially like about Mail essentials is that I didn't have to install its own dedicated computer. I could install it on my main SMTP server and be fine performance-wise. This was very important to me."

He is also satisfied with the support offered by GFI: "The few questions I have had for GFI have been handled very quickly and what they charge for annual support is the best deal I have ever seen. When I first received the quote for annual support and maintenance, I thought it was in error as it was very economical in cost!"

The Keizer Fire District originally purchased Mail essentials 3.5 to run on its Microsoft Small Business Server 4.5 with Exchange 5.5. When the District upgraded to Microsoft Small Business Server 2000, it upgraded to Mail essentials for Exchange 2000.

"In fact, before I upgraded our Small Business Server, I made sure that GFI produced Mail essentials for Exchange 2000. Had GFI not yet developed a version for Exchange 2000, I would have waited to do the server upgrade till it became available. I felt that strongly about Mail essentials running on our mail server," Mr. Conway professed.

"The best benefit of Mail essentials, I think, is that it works day and night without my needing to worry about it doing its job - and that's important to a public safety agency that might need its email at a moment's notice for any kind of emergency or disaster."

Note: Since this case study was compiled (in August 2001), the anti-virus and content checking features of Mail essentials were re-launched in GFI MailSecurity.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

August 2001