Configuring Information Store Scanning

NOTE: The Information Store Protection node is only available when GFI MailSecurity is installed on the Microsoft Exchange machine.

This section will show you how to enable or disable Information Store Scanning, and select the scan method used by VSAPI (Virus Scanning API).

To configure the Information Store Scanning feature, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Information Store Protection node under the Console Root.

2. In the right pane, the Information Store Virus Scanning tab is displayed by default. Here you can select to enable or disable Information Store Scanning by checking or un-checking the Enable Information Store Virus Scanning check box accordingly. The status of the Virus Scanning Engines used to scan the Information Store is also displayed.

Screenshot 41 - Information Store Protection node

NOTE: When you disable Information Store Virus Scanning, the Information Store Scanning option of all Virus Scanning Engines is disabled automatically. When you enable Information Store Virus Scanning, the Information Store Scanning option of all Virus Scanning Engines is enabled automatically. This setting does not affect the Gateway scanning option of each Virus Scanning Engine. The GFI MailSecurity configuration will prompt you about this action as shown in the screenshot below. If you need to enable or disable the Information Store Scanning option for a specific Virus Scanning Engine, please refer to the 'Configuring Virus Scanning Engines' section in this chapter.

Screenshot 42 - All Information Store Virus Scanning Engines have been enabled.

3. To configure what VSAPI scan method to use, access the VSAPI Settings tab.

Screenshot 43 - VSAPI scan settings

4. From the VSAPI Settings tab you can enable background Information Store Scanning, by checking the Enable background scanning check box. This option will cause all the contents of the Information Store to be scanned, which depending on the amount of items stored in the Information Store could result in a huge processing load on the Exchange server. For this reason, it is recommended that this option is only enabled during periods of low server activity such as during the night.

5. You now need to select a VSAPI scan method from the following:

On-access scanning - New items in the Information Store are scanned as soon as they are accessed by the email client. This scan method will thus introduce a short delay before the email client can display the contents of a new message.
Pro-active scanning - New items added to the Information Store are added to a queue for scanning. When a mail client tries to access an item which is still in the queue, it will be allocated a higher scanning priority so that it is scanned as soon as possible. This is the default and recommended mode of operation, since in general the delay associated with on-access scanning is avoided because new items are added to the queue immediately and are usually scanned before a mail client requests access to the item.

6. To save and instruct GFI MailSecurity to make use of the new settings, click the Apply button.