Rule to prevent forwarding an attachment

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My company runs Outlook 2000 on Exchange Server 5.5. Does anyone know if it’s possible to write a rule that would prohibit a user from sending out a specific attachment via e-mail? I’ve written many other rules in Outlook that work just fine, but with this rule I can’t seem to specify an exact attachment by name.

My ultimate goal is to prevent company sensitive documents from being e-mailed outside the company. Has anyone been successful with this? Any input is appreciated.

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Not conversant with Exchange, but I can’t believe it would not be possible to set-up server-based rules to block specifically named attachments (our mail server certainly can.)
But, anyone up to skulduggery just might have the foresight to change the name of a file from ‘Sensitive.doc‘ to ‘Insensitive.doc‘ before sending.
You may end up having to block/edit every[/i] attachment.

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Thanks for the quick response Leif. You pretty much confirmed my line of thinking. Although I hadn’t thought of someone changing the file name, so thanks for that insight.

Getting back to basics they can always print it out and fax it if they’re that intent on distributing it. I don’t want to block/edit every attachment, but at least we could audit the server to find out who is sending the item.

I appreciate your help.

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get a content control addin for the mail server. http://exchange.devx.com[/url%5D has some reviews, many provide non-exchange versions too.

you can’t do it with rules – you might do it with server setting and no addin by restricting message size. but that will only stop longer docs.

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Does Exchange have a content filter?
Our mail server has some pretty neat abilities for searching content. e.g.

if contains and or or then move to foldername and inform administrator.
etc.
You may need to advise all users that their mail is subject to audit, which in itself may be enough to prevent ‘malpractice’ (for lack of a better word).

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