User Guide

13-25
AsyncOS 9.1.2 for Cisco Email Security Appliances User Guide
Chapter 13 Anti-Spam
Testing Anti-Spam
Testing Anti-Spam
Related Topics
• Sending an Email to the Appliance to Test Cisco Anti-Spam, page 13-25
• Ways Not to Test Anti-Spam Efficacy, page 13-26
Sending an Email to the Appliance to Test Cisco Anti-Spam
Before You Begin
• Understand how to use Telnet with the appliance. See Appendix A, “FTP, SSH, and SCP Access”
• Review the example in Testing Anti-Spam Configuration: Example Using SMTP, page 13-25.
Procedure
Step 1 Enable Cisco Anti-Spam on a mail policy.
Step 2 Send a test email that includes the following header to a user in that mail policy:
X-Advertisement: spam
Use SMTP commands with Telnet to send this message to an address to which you have access.
Step 3 Check the mailbox of the test account and confirm that the test message was correctly delivered based
upon the actions you configured for the mail policy.
For example:
• Was the subject line altered?
• Was your additional custom header added?
• Was the message delivered to an alternate address?
• Was the message dropped?
To Do This More Information
Test your configuration. Test your configuration using the
X-advertisement: spam header.
For testing purposes, Cisco Anti-Spam
considers any message with an
X-header formatted as
X-Advertisement: spam to be spam.
The test message you send with this header is flagged by
Cisco Anti-Spam, and you can confirm that the actions
you configured for the mail policy (Defining Anti-Spam
Policies, page 13-7) are performed.
Use this header with one of the following:
• Use SMTP commands to send a test message with
this header. See Sending an Email to the Appliance
to Test Cisco Anti-Spam, page 13-25.
• Use the trace command and include this header. See
Debugging Mail Flow Using Test Messages: Trace,
page 40-1.
Evaluate Anti-Spam
engine efficacy.
Evaluate the product using a live mail
stream directly from the Internet.
For a list of ineffective evaluation approaches that you
should avoid, see Ways Not to Test Anti-Spam Efficacy,
page 13-26.