Title

The ALG that implements spam protection mechanisms must be updated automatically. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Originators of spam messages are constantly changing their techniques in order to defeat spam countermeasures; therefore, spam software must be constantly updated to address the changing threat. A manual update procedure is labor intensive and does not scale well in an enterprise environment. This risk may be mitigated by using an automatic update capability. Spam protection mechanisms include, for example, signature definitions, rule sets, and algorithms. This requirement applies to gateways and firewalls that perform content inspection or have higher-layer proxy functionality.

Check Content

If the ALG does not provide spam protection functions, this is not applicable. Verify the ALG automatically updates spam protection mechanisms. If the ALG does not automatically update spam protection mechanisms, this is a finding.

Fix Text

If the ALG provides spam protection functions, configure the ALG to automatically update spam protection mechanisms.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-68935r1_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-54689

Group Title: SRG-NET-000393-ALG-000144

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.