Google Message Security for Google Apps Administration Guide - Manual (Page 285)

Chapter 14
Industry Heuristics 285
Industry Heuristics
Chapter 14
About Industry Heuristics
Industry Heuristics is an optional feature. For more information on the features
included in your service package, contact your account manager or vendor.
Industry Heuristics can help reduce falsely quarantined messages for users and
groups that receive large numbers legal- or finance-related messages, which can
contain content that appears to be spam. With Industry Heuristics turned on for a
user organization, legitimate legal and financial is identified, and then filtered less
rigorously to assure that these messages reach users. Messages may pass
through spam filters, but are still subject to filtering by the Attachment Manager,
Content Manager, Approved/Blocked Senders lists, and Virus Blocking.
Industry Heuristics is comprised of two functions, Content Heuristics and
Transport Heuristics.
• Content Heuristics recognize content patterns and characteristics unique to a
particular market segment, and considers that in the spam score. Content
Heuristics can apply to spam in two ways:
• Consider in Spam Filters: Makes it less likely that content fitting the
heuristics is quarantined.
• Allow: Automatically approves of all content fitting the Content Heuristics
category.
• Transport Heuristics recognize and authenticate source IP addresses of
legitimate senders within an industry segment to create a “trusted network” of
senders who represent a significant portion of email traffic in that community.
Transport Heuristics compare messages originating from specific domains is
against the list of known IPs for that domain.
Different filtering standards are applied to communications among these
trusted networks, for example, messages between law firms, courts, bar
associations and other government agencies. A message coming from an
authenticated SMTP source in the segment has a higher threshold to be
considered spam. (The list of organizations in the trusted network is not
editable).
Note: Sales organizations may also find legal industry heuristics helpful, as sales
emails often contain contracts and other legal language.