Spam is not detected when Symantec Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange (SMSMSE) is installed on an Microsoft Exchange Edge or Hub server

Products

• Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange

Issue/Introduction

After installing SMSMSE on a Microsoft Exchange 2007 or later server, and enabling Symantec Premium Antispam (SPA), spam is not being detected.

Conditions

• Premium AntiSpam is installed to a server that is not the first point of contact for mail coming in to the organization.
• The first mail server in the environment is set as an internal sender in the transport configuration of the Exchange server on which SMSMSE is installed.

Steps to verify if a front end server is set as an internal sender in Exchange configuration

1. Open the Exchange Management Shell.
2. Run the command Get-TransportConfig | Format-List InternalSMTPServers
   
   If the IP address(es) of the server(s) processing mail prior to the Exchange server on which SMSMSE is installed are listed in brackets {}, this condition is met.

Cause

When a server's IP is defined as an internal sender in the Exchange configuration, Exchange will automatically bypass all Transport Agents for connections coming from that IP address.  Because Premium AntiSpam uses Transport Agents to evaluate message content for spam, this results in no spam detection.

Resolution

Remove the front end server from the internal senders.

Steps to remove a server from internal senders

1. Open the Exchange management shell
2. Run the command Set-TransportConfig -InternalSMTPServers @{remove="<ip of front end server>"}
   For example, if the front end server has IP 10.10.10.10, the command would be:  Set-TransportConfig -InternalSMTPServers @{remove="10.10.10.10"}
3. Restart the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service and the Symantec Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange service.