Praetor differences between versions

Praetor G2 is the second generation of the anti-spam, anti-virus email filtering product that CMS originally introduced in 1999. For the most part, many of the features you have grown accustomed to in Praetor are still found in G2, though the administration interface to those facilities has been displaced. The most significant difference is that G2 is based on Windows 2000 or XP, and employs the SMTP server component that is bundled with the operating system. In fact G2 was re-written so that it becomes an extension of the SMTP server.

Other differences are summarized as follows.

Feature / Criterion	Praetor v1.5	Praetor G2
SMTP server	Included third-party SMTP server.	Microsoft-supplied Windows 2000/XP component for the SMTP virtual server.
Technology connecting SMTP server to rule-based filtering	Separate and independent process.	OS-registered protocol and transport event sinks, making G2 an extension of the SMTP virtual server.
Required Windows OS platform	NT, 2000, XP in either the workstation/professional or server editions.	2000, XP Professional editions 2000, 2003 server editions. Windows NT is no longer supported.
Administrator user interface	Control Panel applet.	Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in.
Available anti-spam countermeasures	DNS blacklist, Local white and black lists, Rules.	DNS blacklist, Local white and black lists, Rules, Weighted words, Heuristic scoring of message body and header, Bayesian statistical sampling.
DNS blacklist access	Multiple queries performed in sequence.	Performed more efficiently in parallel awaiting for first response indicating the IP address is on the blacklist.
Treatment of email from DNS blacklisted mail server	Reject at the SMTP protocol level without ever receiving it.	Reject at the SMTP protocol level or allow the message to be received and defer decision to message level rule. This means such messages can be quarantined and released if sent by a trading partner whose mail server is blacklisted.
Solution to the reverse NDR attack	Implemented at the message level, requiring the message to be completely received first.	Adds implementation at the SMTP protocol level so that the complete message need not be received before shutting down the connection.
Access to quarantined messages	Administrator only via console or remote Log Viewer application.	Adds web-browser access for both administrator and users. While the administrator can view the entire quarantine area, users can only view their personal quarantined mail.
Ability to create new string lists	None, but you can request CMS to create one.	Yes, the administrator can which will be used with a new custom condition that allows selection of the list for searching various message header fields.
Log entries	Placed into an ASCII delimited file.	Placed into a SQL database.
Log Analyzer	Requires log entries to be imported into a Microsoft Access database.	Natively accesses the SQL database directly.

Click here to see the upgrade process from Praetor v1.5 to G2.

Transferring rules and lists:

Due to the effectiveness of the Bayesian filtering technique and heuristic analysis, many of your old rules will become completely unnecessary. Thus we do not suggest that you transfer any spam-related rules that you created in v1.5, relying instead on using the new G2 filtering techniques.

There are, however, certain exceptions that you will want to transfer such as custom rules and lists you created that are not involved with filtering spam such as those dealing with:

Confidential information
Competition
Approved list of sender addresses, domains, and listservers
Lists for banned or suspicious attachments
Lists for suspicious senders and domains (formerly v1.5 banned senders and domains)
Lists for disallowed profanity

Any custom rules will need to be re-created in G2. As for lists, those internal lists can be bulk exported from Praetor v1.5 by using the MODLIST command line tool when invoked as follows:

MODLIST /EXPLISTS: MyPrLists.TXT

Once exported you can then use the import feature in Praetor G2 list management.

This bulk export from Praetor v1.5 only works for those predefined internal lists. If the rule you created employed on-the-fly lists via a "with specific words" condition, then you will need to export these entries directly from the list. The MODLIST tool will not export these entries. The import into G2 remains the same.