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From...
Holiday attachments unwrap trouble
December 15, 1998
Web posted at: 11:00 AM EST
by Roberta Fusaro
(IDG) -- Corporate users said they're ready for the visions of sugarplums, dancing reindeer and executable Santas that may soon appear in their E-mail in-boxes.
Large, holiday E-mail attachments gained notoriety last year. They often are passed among multiple corporate users or saved to users' hard drives. However, the files can eat up network space and bandwidth that might otherwise be used for mission-critical tasks -- and they also may carry viruses, analysts said.
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Users and analysts said the graphics files really don't pose much of a problem overall, although their volume does build during the countdown to Christmas Day.
MacDonnell Ulsch, a consultant in the technical risk services group at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Boston, said holiday E-mail files cross the line from nuisance to concern if the file has a virus associated with it and if it's creating network bottlenecks. "But most users have the bandwidth to handle them," he said.
For those who don't, vendors such as Trend Micro Inc. and WorldTalk Inc. provide E-mail filtering software that can help pluck out graphics-heavy files. And Dayton, Ohio-based E-mail outsourcer Allegro Inc. last month announced free content-filtering to help companies block the traditional holiday-related AVI and MPEG video files that make the rounds this time of year.
After Jan. 15, the service will cost about $25 per month. Allegro's target users are small to midsize businesses.
Brian Andrews, CC:Mail administrator in the consumer products division at Walt Disney Co. in Burbank, Calif., said the free filter would work best for smaller companies that have a tight rein on their messaging systems. By contrast, Disney's own mail system is sprawling, with more than 65,000 business users worldwide, he said.
Andrews said Disney has no policy against holiday E-mail attachments. He said they haven't posed much of a problem in the past.
Holiday attachments also aren't expected to create a problem at Chevron Co., officials said. Chevron, in San Ramon, Calif., uses a combination of end-user education, corporate policies on the appropriate use of E-mail and firewall software to handle large file attachments, said Marion Weiler, senior messaging technologist at the company. Chevron has 30,000 users worldwide.