So now that I have Exchange all hooked up and chugging away, I still had a few issues to sort out before I could (In Demtel’s Words) “Set it and Forget It!”. Namely, now that my domain’s MX records pointed straight to my server, there was no SPAM protection (when hosted on my web server, I had SPAM Assassin). On another SPAM related issue, because I am behind a dynamic IP, a lot of SPAM black lists block these ranges so I was getting a few bounce backs as a result of that… so I need to enable the exact same filtering that is blocking my outgoing emails currently!

So firstly, I setup my Exchange server to cross reference emails against a publicly available SPAM black list, SpamHaus. You do this via adding a connection filtering rule in message delivery properties (in the Exchange System Manager snap-in):

1. Under Global Settings, right-click Message Delivery and select Properties
2. Select the Connection Filtering tab
3. Click Add
4. Enter zen.spamhaus.org as the DNS Suffix of Provider and Display Name
5. Clock Ok

Next you have to manually enable filtering with this rule on your SMTP Virtual Server. To do this:

1. Under Servers > *Server Name* > Protocols > SMTP, right-click your SMTP server and select Properties
2. Click Advanced next to IP Address
3. Click Edit
4. Tick all the Check Boxes in this window and choose OK

So now that has blocked dynamic IP ranges and publicly known SPAM servers / address ranges for sending you email, too easy! As I don’t have that many address on my domains, this and some basic SCL filtering is thus far proving to be very effective at blocking SPAM. Obviously on an enterprise level you will need some 3rd party SPAM / Virus software on top of this basic SPAM protection available in Exchange.