These days everyone is well aware of the needs for security and the value of firewalls, anti-virus and anti-spam software and the many other protection measures in the enterprise.

But sometimes too much security can actually inhibit productivity. At the very least it might be considered an annoyance but some end users. And at its worst too much security can become redundant with many features and function overlapping one another.

Sometimes your users are attempting to open email attachments from the outside they will receive messages indicating that they are not allowed to access those attachments. In Outlook 2000 such messages look like the following:

“Outlook blocked access to the following potentially unsafe attachments.”

If Outlook blocks an attachment, then end users cannot save, delete, open, print, or otherwise work with the attachment in Outlook. However, there are several methods available which will allow end users the capability to safely access those attachments.

The reason why some users receive the attachment blocked message is that with Outlook 2000 SR-1 and SR-1a there was a new security feature included which prevented some attachments from being opened if they were categorized as containing potentially unsafe data. This feature was very useful since a lot of malicious attacks coming in from the outside could easily be disguised as or hidden in attachments. Continue reading Blocked Access to Outlook Attachments