Barracuda Reputation

Barracuda Reputation is maintained by Barracuda Central and includes a list of IP addresses of known, good senders as well as known spammers. Updates to the Barracuda Reputation database are delivered to the Barracuda Email Security Gateway via Barracuda Energize Updates. There are two parts to the Barracuda Reputation controls: 

Barracuda Reputation Blocklist (BRBL) - The BRBL is a database of IP addresses that have been manually verified to be a noted source of spam. Incoming connection requests from IP addresses on this list are terminated, and no information about the incoming message (other than the originating IP address) is kept. Checks are made against the BRBL prior to any other external IP blocklists, and can only be overridden by the following: 

any whitelists configured by the admin or an end-user; 

any IP address in the Barracuda Reputation, External RBL IP Exemption Range list configured below. 

It is strongly recommended that the BRBL option be set to Block.  

Email Categorization - This feature allows administrators more control over what they believe to be spam, even though those messages may not meet the technical definition of spam. Emails that originate from Barracuda-verified sources (including what was formerly known as the Barracuda Reputation Whitelist) are categorized into one of the following Categories based on the sending domain name and IP address: 

Transactional Emails - Emails related to a specific transaction or order, and automated notifications. Includes order and delivery confirmations and notices; bills and invoices; bank statements; account update notices. This category should always be set to Whitelist to ensure that critical emails are allowed through. 

Mailing Lists - Mailing lists and newsgroups for special interest groups such as Google and Yahoo Groups. Recommended Action: Whitelist. 

Corporate Emails - Emails sent from an authenticated organization's Barracuda-verified mail server. Meant for general corporate communications only. This category should always be set to Whitelist to ensure that business emails are allowed through. 

Marketing Materials - Promotional emails and newsletters from companies such as Constant Contact. Recommended Action: Off. 

Social Media - Social media notifications from sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Recommended Action: Whitelist. 

The administrator can specify an Action to take on messages in that Category, or set the Action to Off in order to use all other spam scanning measures and processes that determine the action to take. A message may fall into multiple Email Categories, each of which can be associated with a different Action. In these situations, the action with the higher precedence will be taken on that message, as listed below in descending order of precedence: 

Whitelist - Deliver the message. 

Block - Do not deliver the message. The complete contents can still be viewed from the Message Log. 

Quarantine - Put the message into quarantine. 

Tag - Prepend the Subject line of the message with the Category's Subject Tag, and deliver the message. 

Off - Do not take any action based on this categorization, and continue with all other spam scanning and processing measures.