Anti-spam profiles are global and cannot be created or deleted, only enabled or disabled. All policies will share the same Anti-Spam settings when applied as a security profile, although the type security action can be modified. When not using anti-spam scanning, the anti-spam profile can be safely disabled.

Anti-spam uses Email Reputation Services (ERS) technology, which is a Smart Protection Network component that verifies IP addresses of incoming email messages using one of the world's largest, most trusted reputation databases, along with a dynamic reputation database to identify new spam and phishing sources, stopping even zombies and botnets when they first emerge. For details, see Email Reputation Technology.