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 Cloud Services

Advanced Email Services

Our cloud based email protection service provides advanced email services independent of your current mail server.  Since the service lives in the cloud it has several benefits:

Rapid Deployment
All infrastructure and software works in the cloud but with your existing email system. Thus there is no need to invest in or deploy new hardware or software at your location or reconfigure existing systems.

Easy Maintenance
Updates and new features are automatically deployed in the cloud without user intervention, downtime or additional cost.

Reliability
The protection service provides 99.999% availability for message processing and 100% virus protection.

Below are the key system features.  We tried to keep it brief but there's just so much that's too important to be left out!

SPAM Management
The protection service detects spam by applying hundreds of rules to each message that passes through the data center. It can block obvious spam immediately, then divert more borderline spam to a Quarantine for later evaluation. From there, you or your users can review the Quarantine for any legitimate messages that were falsely quarantined and need to be forwarded to the user’s Inbox. Otherwise, spam is deleted automatically.

Initially, all types of spam are typically filtered at a uniform level of aggressiveness. One group of users, however, might have its own idea about what constitutes spam, or how aggressively to filter it. A travel agency might have a zero-tolerance policy for adult content, for example, but want to receive special offers, such as “trips to Hawaii.” Another group might want to change its spam disposition, by changing how its spam is quarantined, or not quarantining it at all.

Filtering aggressiveness affects how the protection service handles messages that may or may not be spam. More aggressive spam filter levels will quarantine messages that are borderline cases. This will cause more spam to be caught, but may increase false positives. More lenient spam filters will allow borderline messages through, which reduces false positives but potentially lets more spam through.

The protection service allows one to adjust the overall aggressiveness of filtering, filter specific categories of spam more aggressively, and choose a spam disposition. You can also adjust individual user’s filtering, or allow users to do this themselves through the user portal.

SPAM Attack Blocking
Identifies a sudden spike in the volume of spam relative to total inbound messages. A spam attack is tracked by monitoring both the ratio of spam to valid email, as well as the total volume of spam from the IP during a specific interval. If the ratio changes in a statistically significant manner, the IP will be blocked for several hours.

Virus Blocking
Viruses, when detected, can either be deleted, quarantined in a user or administrator quarantine, or tagged as viruses in the message email headers.

Virus Attack Blocking
A virus attack is tracked by monitoring both the ratio of virus infected messages to valid email, as well as the total volume of virus infected messages from the IP during a specific interval. If the ratio changes in a statistically significant manner, the IP will be blocked for several hours. 

Approve and Block Sender Lists
If you discover that some quarantined messages are actually good mail that just look like spam, you can add the senders of those messages to an appropriate approved-senders list. If a number of quarantined senders are from the same domain, such as the same company, add the domain to an appropriate approved-senders list. Messages from those senders are then delivered to user’s in your organization, regardless of the spam-like content. You can also block specific senders or entire domains in the same way. In this case, all messages (SPAM or not) from the blocked sender or domain will be rejected and will not be delivered to your server.

Phishing Protection
A phishing attack is a type of spam disguised as valid email that is designed to trick recipients into providing information or visiting a hostile web site. For instance, a common type of phishing attack is a message, supposedly from a bank, claiming that a credit card and password are needed. A URL is provided to a site at which users can enter credit card information. That information is then used illegally. Because phishing attacks are sent in mass, they are normally detected and stopped as spam.

Email Bomb Protection
Email bombs are denial of service attacks where unusually large messages, or an unusually high volume of messages are sent repeatedly. Connection Manager will identify spikes in message volume that violate standard variance in message traffic. Conditions where like messages are sent repeatedly, messages are of particular size characteristics, and the ratio of suspect to valid email is high will result in the classification of an email bomb.  By blocking this kind of attack the system prevents delivery of messages meant to deny or disrupt normal services.

Directory Harvest Attack Protection
A Directory Harvest Attack is a series of delivery attempts that result in 550 errors. Your email server will respond to each request, issuing potentially thousands of 550 errors. When the spammer lucks into a valid address, a spam may be delivered, and the address is logged as valid. Sensitivity allows a variance in the ratio of valid to invalid messages per session or per source IP. Very Low sensitivity will NOT block the IP if there is a single valid address in the session. Very High sensitivity ranges up to a ratio of 1:5 valid addresses. By blocking this kind of attack the system prevents spammers from harvesting valid email addresses off of your server.

Emergency Email Backup (Spooling)
When your email server is down, the system is automatically triggered to start holding your messages until your servers are back online. During this time, people on the outside sending emails to your organization will not see any bounced messages, and once your servers are back online those messages held in spooling will be gradually delivered to your email server (so as not to overload it!). Your users won't get email delivered to them during the server outage, but once your email server is back up and running, they we system will deliver all email and they can continue working normally.  This feature can also be triggered manually if needed during planned server maintenance.

Multiple Server Delivery
  Distributed Delivery - Distributes messages across multiple email servers in a regulated manner.
   Fail-Over Delivery -
If the primary email servers fail, messages can be delivered to an alternate
     pool of email servers.

  Dual-Delivery -
Send a copy of all incoming messages to a second mail server. Users must be
     registered on both mail servers.

Attachment Management
Filters inbound messages based on the size or type of attachments.

Content Management
Filter inbound messages based on their content.

Message Limits
Set limits on the number of daily messages received by a user or group of users.