Cisco Cisco Email Security Appliance C160 Mode D'Emploi

To allow Cisco to better support and design future system changes, the appliance can be configured to 
send Cisco Systems a copy of all alert messages generated by the system. This feature, called 
AutoSupport, is a useful way to allow our team to be proactive in supporting your needs. AutoSupport 
also sends weekly reports noting the uptime of the system, the output of the 

status

 command, and the 

AsyncOS version used.

By default, alert recipients set to receive Information severity level alerts for System alert types will 
receive a copy of every message sent to Cisco. This can be disabled if you do not want to send the weekly 
alert messages internally. To enable or disable this feature, see 

Alerts sent from the appliance to addresses specified in the Alert Recipient follow SMTP routes defined 
for those destinations.

Because alert messages can be used to inform you of problems within your appliance, they are not sent 
using AsyncOS’s normal mail delivery system. Instead, alert messages pass through a separate and 
parallel email system designed to operate even in the face of significant system failure in AsyncOS. 

The alert mail system does not share the same configuration as AsyncOS, which means that alert 
messages may behave slightly differently from other mail delivery:

Alert messages are delivered using standard DNS MX and A record lookups.

They do not use 

smtproutes

 in AsyncOS versions older then 5.X.

They do cache the DNS entries for 30 minutes and the cache is refreshed every 30 minutes, so 
in case of DNS failure the alerts still go out.

Alert messages do not pass through the work queue, so they are not scanned for viruses or spam. 
They are also not subjected to message filters or content filters.

Alert messages do not pass through the delivery queue, so they are not affected by bounce profiles 
or destination control limits.